


Here the Deadened Strain Revive

by demonology



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-02
Updated: 2012-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-15 11:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 43,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonology/pseuds/demonology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Banished to Purgatory, Castiel must rekindle his friendship with Dean and mend his damaged mind as they fight for their lives and search for a way back home. With only each other to rely on, they navigate a horrific wasteland populated with creatures both new and familiar, and as the dangers mount they realize that there might be more to their bond than they ever could have imagined. (Note: This fic does not include any season 8 spoilers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here the Deadened Strain Revive

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2012 [deancasbigbang](http://deancasbigbang.livejournal.com/profile) challenge on Livejournal. Beta by lacidana (LJ) and eternity_dreams (LJ). 
> 
> Other warnings include: mental instability, transformation, mind control, minor character death. 
> 
> View the accompanying art by miki_moo over [here](http://miki-moo.livejournal.com/37435.html)! 
> 
> More detailed author notes located [here](http://burningvigor.livejournal.com/323270.html).

Focus. It was time to focus.

That Castiel knew, more than he'd known anything in a very long time. There was no longer any time to think about the bees or the butterflies, the honey or the pollen. Purgatory contained none of those things. It only had blood, and death, and creatures beyond what he or Dean could have imagined. 

No, that wasn't quite right. Some of these things had existed within Castiel, and not all that long ago. They'd clawed at his soul and he'd felt their taint. In a way, all of this was sickeningly familiar. 

They were surrounded. It was why he left Dean without another word (there was no _time_ ) and went to fight. 

Before this, he had truly thought that he would never pick up his blade again. He'd told himself as much, over and over again, like a nursery rhyme, like a lullaby. _There will be no more blood spilled by Castiel,_ he'd insisted through the cracks in his mind. _This soldier, this angel, has fought too many battles. He got proud, and he aimed to be the strongest, and it broke him._

But as Dean had made so clear, no one cared that he was broken. He reappeared in front of one of the monsters, landing him face-to-face with one of their souls for the first time. Prior to this, he'd only felt them churning inside him, brimming with power. But due to that, he understood just how strong these things could be. 

On Earth, they so often hid, masquerading as humans the same way that angels did. But here they stretched out, fully formed, hideous and massive and dripping with blood and their poisoned saliva. The one he was facing off with now looked only vaguely like a canine, but it towered over his human body, each leg the width of a tree trunk, covered in a spattering of fur and some sort of armor. 

Castiel raced forward and slashed at the monster's throat with his blade. He watched as flashes of light exploded from the wounds that he opened up, illuminating the dark landscape around him, but he didn't have the luxury to examine it in any detail. The only thing he could focus on was the red of the monster's eyes as it pulled forward, exhaling putrid breath into his face. 

The smell, which reminded him of corpses eaten by maggots, of vomit, of rotted garbage, caused Castiel to step back. A flash of movement distracted him, but the cry of, “Take this, bitch!” signaled who had joined them. 

“Dean!” 

Dean raced forward and shoved a pointed tree branch into the beast's side. It bellowed out and swiped at him with an armored paw. Dean careened backward against a tree.

Castiel moved without thinking and shoved the tip of his blade up through the canine's throat into its mouth. It screeched, and staggered back, huffing in pain and dribbling black blood.

Castiel's body shuddered as he lowered his blade. He sent only a passing glance at the injured monster, which had backed off after that devastating blow, before he rushed over to Dean. He was conscious, leaning against the tree and clutching his side. 

“Why the hell did you run off like that?” Dean's face teetered between emotions—the thrill of adrenaline mixed with a primal fear that came off of him in waves, not that Castiel could fault him for it. Dean hunted these things for a living, but landing in the middle of a graveyard for every evil thing that had prowled the Earth would have been enough to render most humans catatonic. 

He grabbed Dean's arm and pulled him away from the creature, as he guessed it wouldn't be long before it shook off that wound and came for them again. “As far as I can tell, that's the strongest creature in the area. Wounding it should scare away the others, at least for a time. Are you hurt?” 

“Just a scratch,” Dean said as he shook his head and wrested himself from Castiel's grip while they ran from the creature—though where to, Castiel didn't know. For now, all he saw were more trees, rising above them in twisted patterns that made him think of the limbs of a skeleton, put back together the wrong way. 

Once enough distance was put between them and the monster, Castiel slowed into a brisk walk, and Dean, suffering from that injury, appeared glad to follow suit. 

Castiel eyed the blood seeping through Dean's shirt. “You should have let me handle it.” 

“Yeah, I should have done a lot of things,” Dean said bitingly. 

Castiel ignored it. “We need to find a safe place.” 

“Wait—what do you mean, safe?” Dean stopped walking and placed one hand to his side. “I don't think there _is_ such a thing as a safe place here.” 

“Then we'll have to carve one out,” Castiel countered as he pressed forward. 

Dean let out a noise of frustration behind him, but Castiel knew that he wouldn't want to be left alone again. Not here. He did his best to drown out the thoughts that came creeping in, about how he'd left Dean alone plenty of times in the past. 

Yet, as expected, he heard Dean's boots crunch through the dead leaves as he followed after him. 

Castiel took the lead without hesitation, but it wasn't as if he had anything under control—far from it. But this was what Dean required at the moment—a steady hand, a voice of reason, so he didn't think of the other dark realm he'd been trapped in. From what Castiel had seen so far, Purgatory wasn't much like Hell, but it bordered close enough that he had reason for concern. And if he was going to have to force himself to hold strong—inadequately, like a shattered glass put back together with glue—then he would do it for Dean. 

Fear had no place here, if they wished to survive.

\--- 

Carving out a safe place was far more difficult than Castiel was prepared for. Unlike Hell, which he'd stormed into on his own power and with a specific goal, Purgatory felt like a cage, a sprawling wasteland that he knew not the extent of.

As they traveled through the mazelike forest, Castiel quietly tested out his power and his senses to work out what he was capable of. Dean had sharp instincts, but he could only hear or see so far. Castiel, meanwhile, could gather a vague idea of the area around them, but there were so many souls out there, filled with anger and desperation and an unending hunger, that it was difficult to sort through it all. His clouded mind was not as sharp as it had once been, and he found himself faltering where before he would have spoken with certainty. 

Dean knew better than to speak up (and likely wasn't interested in talking while wounded, Castiel imagined) as they stumbled their way out of the forest and onto an open field. The sky, full of swirling dark clouds, made Castiel feel exposed, which soon proved to not be simply the product of paranoia when a pack of screeching figures descended on them. 

“What the hell are those?” Dean snapped as he stared upward, face pulled in disgust. 

Spindly, humanoid creatures with mottled wings and taloned feet, Castiel recognized them from days of old. The Greeks hadn't made them up. “Harpies.” 

Dean clamped his hand against his side once more, and for the second time in the space of a few hours, they broke out into a run. The sounds of the harpies' cries echoed behind them in a cacophony. When one of the beast's talons came dangerously close to snagging Dean in the shoulder, Castiel grabbed him—and despite the fact that his wings felt strangely weighed down, flew forward. A shot in the dark, toward whatever his dulled senses could perceive as “safe.” 

They crashed rather than landed. Despite his best efforts, Castiel lost hold of Dean, who collapsed to the ground with a yell.

“My apologies,” Castiel said as he focused on determining where they were, which looked to a mountain path. 

Dean ignored the hand he offered and pushed himself to his feet. “Fuck, I forgot how much that sucked.” 

Castiel, oddly used to not being thanked for saving Dean's life by now, said nothing. The possibility of finding a cave where they could rest spurred both of them forward, but as they found the welcoming mouth of one, they also heard a worrying squelching sound.

Dean groaned louder than was strictly necessary considering their situation. “Are you serious?” 

“I'm not sure what you were expecting,” Castiel said as he crept forward. Waiting for them was a being more gelatinous than solid, its mouth some kind of constantly warping cavity that it likely used to suck in its prey. This one Castiel had no name for. 

“Well,” Dean muttered, “seventy-two non-virgins would've been nice.”

Through some teamwork and with the help of the path's uneven terrain, they tricked the monster into trapping itself in a crevice, and staggered their way into the cave with the hope that it would be unable to free itself. When Castiel finally had the chance to properly look at Dean, he saw that his front was covered in the creature's sludge and the side of his shirt was stained red. 

“So, purgatory. Definitely a vacation spot. Gotta look into real estate here,” Dean said as he fell to the ground and leaned up against the cave wall. He made futile attempts to wipe the slime off of his shirt, but it only stuck to his hands. Castiel wondered if there were even bodies of water in this barren land where Dean could clean himself off. 

“I already did,” Castiel blurted out.

He still didn't have complete control over his thoughts or his words, and almost immediately after he spoke he hunched his shoulders down and looked away. Human language was limited in so many ways, and yet there were other times when it tricked him, when the words came out wrong and he gave things away. 

Dean was quiet for a long time, but instead of looking over, Castiel stared at the blood on his sword, which was still gripped tight in one hand. Already, he'd become a soldier again. He didn't know if that was right or wrong. 

Dean let out a breath. “Okay, two things,” he said. “First of all, you need to get your head back on straight. Yeah, you screwed up a lot along the way, I'm sure as hell not denying that. And fixing Sam, that undid a lot of it, but maybe this is your chance to fix the rest.”

Except that nothing was fixed, not on Earth, not in Purgatory, not within his own mind. He needed to be right, to be _Cas_ , for them to make it through this. Thus far, he hadn't done a very good job with that in any realm. 

“Second thing would be figuring out how to get out of here. Do you even have a clue?”

Of course he did. He'd spent upwards of a year pouring through books on Purgatory with a demon over his shoulder. He felt all of that knowledge, swimming in this human head that was somehow his, but he realized he didn't want to go anywhere near it. “I opened the door to Purgatory once before,” he said, distantly. It felt like eons had passed since then, like he'd lived a hundred lives in the interim. 

“I know. Kind of hard to forget.” While Dean's words were harsh, his tone wasn't. He sounded tired, and who wouldn't be, after their attack on Dick Roman's headquarters and now this? Even Castiel felt worn down, but that had already been the case ever since he'd woken up in that mental hospital. 

It _was_ hard to forget, and the sigils that he'd drawn in blood flashed through his mind like a blinding headache. He didn't want to repeat any of it. 

The cave rang with silence. 

“Any bright ideas?” Dean cut through it. He had to know that he was prodding at a wound. 

“I wouldn't call ideas bright. If anything, they're sharp—”

“ _Cas_.”

He wanted to apologize, but even showing Dean “SORRY” in large, colorful letters hadn't gotten the message across. While he realized that things had improved slightly between them now, that Dean was slowly forgiving him, being trapped in the very place that had started this all wasn't helping matters. Neither was his mental state.

“I'm not sure,” Castiel admitted. “To open it from this side, it's possible we need to reverse the spell. That would mean...” He paused and sucked in a breath. He swore he could feel the weight of that jar of blood in his hand. “It would be... the blood of someone corrupted and the blood of a being from Earth.” 

“Corrupted?” Dean echoed as he added pressure to the wound on his side. “What marks someone as corrupted?” 

“I don't _know_ , Dean,” Castiel snapped. 

Dean gave him a guarded look and then nodded. “So we have to make it up as we go along. Well, that ain't nothing new. At least we've got the 'being from Earth' part covered.” 

Despite feigning ignorance, Castiel eyed the veins at his wrist, etched out blue against his skin. If anything could stand as a sign of corruption, an angel that had absorbed a large portion of Purgatory's population had to qualify. For once, the string of bad decisions he'd made might come in handy for them. 

He banished that thought and glanced back to Dean. “Even if we assume that I'm right, it's not that simple,” he said, shaking his head. “The ritual likely needs to be performed in a specific place and at a specific time.”

Dean sighed and slouched down further against the wall. It didn't look the slightest bit comfortable, but beds and hot meals were a thing of the past now. While Dean was trying to hold strong so far and hadn't uttered a single complaint about his wound, Castiel didn't know how long he would be able to survive like this. 

“Okay, one thing at a time,” Dean said. “Where?” 

“We'll want to find the place where the barrier between Purgatory and Earth is weakest. That's likely where the door opened when I—” 

He cut off. When that wall had cracked open and revealed all those souls to him, he'd felt a sliver of what was on the other side, even if he hadn't seen anything specific. He could probably track down that location from in here as well, but it was best not to explain his full thought process to Dean. 

“Once we leave this cave, I'll attempt to feel for it and we can start heading in that direction.” 

“Works for me,” Dean said with a nod. “How about timing?” 

“On the other side, it was on the night of the lunar eclipse,” Castiel stated, trying to force his voice to remain neutral. He was already on shaky ground, having to refer back to that night in such detail. 

“So if your reverse theory is right, that would be the solar eclipse?” 

“That's my guess.”

Dean winced and dragged a hand down his face. “It's not like we have Google here. How do we figure out when that is?” 

Castiel paused and thought it over for a moment. Human technology wasn't the only way to find things out, after all. “Some of the creatures here are going to be familiar to us. If we find a sentient one, we can try to determine if there's any way to predict Earth's solar cycles from here.” 

Dean straightened up, looking genuinely irritated. “Cas, I don't know if you've noticed, but it's not like we can just flag someone down to answer a few questions. Everything here wants to _eat_ us.” 

“Tear us limb from limb and feast on our entrails would be a more apt way of putting it.” 

“...Thanks for that. But that's another thing,” Dean continued, leaning forward. He'd clearly given up on tending to his wound at this point. “Say they do feast on us or whatever—what happens then?” 

“Everything here is already dead,” Castiel said, closing his eyes and recalling how often his own being had been ripped apart. Always put back together, and never quite as well as the previous time. How much longer before there was nothing left? 

“Right, but _we_ aren't.” 

“No. But if we are killed here, we'll be trapped. Our souls will be pinned here, first to be torn apart by its creatures, then to become just as monstrous. We'll be forced through agony until we've transformed to the point that we belong here.” It was much like Hell in that way. So much for aiming to distract Dean from those thoughts.

Dean stared, mouth slightly ajar until he snapped it shut and tightened his jaw. “Right. No heroic sacrifices for either of us, then.” 

Depending on how the ritual played out, provided they got to the right spot at the right time, a sacrifice might be exactly what was needed. But Castiel remained silent on that point. 

Not that it lasted long. Dean pressed on. “So, you said something about running into familiar monsters. Do you mean—”

“The ones you've killed in your time as a hunter, yes.” Castiel was shocked that some of them hadn't caught their scent and come looking already.

Dean paused and stared down at the cave's floor, the weathered rock that had probably been here for the equivalent of millennia. How did time pass in Purgatory? If they ever did make it back to Earth, would there be anyone to greet them? There was too much he didn't know, and it left Castiel even more out of his element than he was already.

“Yeah, my guess is they aren't going to be all that eager to help us out,” Dean's said, his face pinched with an expression Castiel couldn't identify. For once, he realized it had nothing to do with him. 

“That depends. Some of the monsters you dispatched, they asked for death. They felt guilt.” Castiel felt that sudden weight on his shoulders, pressing down his wings. After holding all of those creatures inside of him, was he any better than that now? No, he was certain that he'd qualify as corrupted for their ritual. “Like that vampire.”

“Lenore? The one you killed?” Dean gave him one of those looks, like Castiel wasn't understanding something that should have been very obvious. 

But even though he'd been so many things—a fallen angel, a leviathan's vessel, a man named Emmanuel, a mental patient—he still didn't know exactly how being human worked. “Something in that vein, yes,” he said quietly. 

“All right, all right,” Dean relented. “But what if they don't know anything?”

Dean made a good point. Assuming that a monster that had been caught in this wasteland for the past however-many years knew anything about Earth's solar cycles was a stretch even by their standards. “We think of something else,” Castiel responded. Yet despite grasping, his mind wasn't coming up with anything else at the moment. 

It was all too tentative for his comfort, but there wasn't much that could be done about it. The fact that they had survived this long was shocking enough on its own, but surviving seemed to be the one thing he and Dean could do without question, even if it meant being brought back from death. 

Dean drew a hand through his hair. “Guess we'll just have to figure something out.” 

“You should rest for now.” Castiel's gaze settled on Dean's side, which looked to still be bleeding slightly, and he suddenly shrugged out of his trenchcoat. “Here,” he said as he extended the coat toward Dean. “Apply pressure.” 

“What are you, a nurse? And it's fine—it's not as deep as it looks.” 

Castiel frowned. “Why won't you let me help you?” 

Dean looked taken aback by that, eyeing him for a moment before he shook his head. “It's not that. Just... look, I kept that thing so I could return it someday. Don't be so ready to get it bloody all over again.” He pulled a face and glanced away. 

Castiel supposed Dean had a point. Slowly, he pulled it back on, realizing that it was still warm from Jimmy Novak's body heat. “I would heal you if I could, but I'm—”

Dean waved him off and then turned himself to the side so that he was pressed up against the rock wall. He closed his eyes. “Gonna try and sleep for a couple hours. Wake me up if one of those bastards comes knocking.” 

Castiel nodded. While there was so much that he could no longer do, so many skills that he'd lost or given up for some greater sacrifice, watching Dean sleep was something he could still easily manage.

As he watched over Dean, he stared down at his hands, imagined the blood flowing beneath the skin, and wondered how much of it would need to be spilled to get Dean out of here in one piece. 

However much was needed, he would give it up gladly.

\--- 

Both Castiel and Dean were well aware that they had a deadline, and the fact that they had no idea what it was only made it harder to stay in one place for any long amount of time. But Dean needed to rest and to let his wound heal up at least slightly before they moved on, and so they settled into the cave for a few days. Or what felt like a few days, at the least. Sunrise and sunsets didn't exist here. There wasn't even a moon. Just dark, foreboding clouds that weren't there for looks alone—at one point, it poured for hours—and the howling of the wind as it cut through the cave and their bones.

Castiel set a few ground rules early on, most importantly that neither of them could venture out on their own, not even to forage for something. But seeing as Dean required sleep and he didn't, Castiel was willing to break his own rule if necessary. 

Finding Dean a gun would be impossible, so they went for the next best thing. Dean focused on the branch that he'd grabbed from the forest and, with the help of Castiel's sword, carved it into a proper stake for himself. While a piece of sharpened wood wasn't likely to do much good against most of the creatures here, it all depended on the hands that weapon was placed in. 

As time passed, Castiel tried to keep track of it, usually during the times when Dean slept. He counted each millisecond, second, minute, hour, but it didn't go as planned. Focus was a tenuous thing with him these days, and instead of counting, his mind flitted away somewhere else. He'd think of Meg watching him from the doorway of his hospital bedroom, of the face of a relieved patient who Emmanuel had healed, of Crowley's baffled expression when his attempts to exact revenge hadn't gone as planned. 

And then Castiel would snap up, and recall what he'd been doing, and start counting again. There might not be a point to it, but it made him feel like he was sharpening his mind, working out an atrophied muscle. 

Hiding out would get them nowhere, however, and so when Dean woke up after his fourth time resting, they decided it was time to move on. Before they slipped out of the relative safety of the cave, however, Dean stopped him. 

“Hold on a second. How long do you think we've been here?” 

Dean couldn't have known that Castiel had been trying to work on keeping track of time since they'd arrived. “I'm not certain,” he said after a pause. “You've slept four times thus far.”

“Yeah, but I run on less sleep than the average person. What I don't get is why I'm not hungry.” 

It was so obvious that Castiel didn't understand why he hadn't noticed. Not that he could fly off and find fresh ingredients to make Dean a sandwich here. In fact, as far as he could tell from the little of Purgatory that he'd seen, there was nothing edible here period. All the monsters seemed to eat were each other. 

“Hunger must not exist here,” he said plainly. That had to be strange for Dean, but in the end it worked to their advantage. Keeping Dean fed would have been one more obstacle to keep track of. 

“Huh. I'd say that was a first, but...” Dean gave him a knowing look. 

Castiel nodded, because he also remembered when the Horseman had rid Dean of his appetite. “Famine.” 

That time, it had been about Dean's supposed emptiness, about how hollow he was underneath all that bravado and indulgence. Castiel hadn't said anything about it then, because he hadn't had the words and there hadn't been time. Not with the Apocalypse on the horizon. 

He couldn't think of anything to say about it now, either (he knew every Earth language, and yet words still failed him), and so he moved past Dean and out of the cave. 

On their way up the mountain path, Dean almost tripped over a rock and they heard something shift in response. Not willing to risk the assumption that it was just the wind, they broke into a run, which was much harder to manage when it was uphill. Not long after, Castiel rounded a corner too quickly and almost walked right into a wounded wendigo, left to bleed out by whatever had mauled it. It taught them how little room for error there was. 

By Castiel's count, it felt like a day had passed before they reached the top of the mountain path and neared a flat stretch of land. His own body felt sore from the exertion, which was new to him, but he didn't bother telling Dean. He didn't need to worry him. 

“Fucking finally,” Dean wheezed as he stumbled after him. 

But as Castiel gained a view of what waited for them over that crest of land, he stopped dead in his tracks and reached behind him to hold Dean back, as if he could protect him from the sight. 

“Dude, what gives?” But it didn't take long for Dean to pick up on Castiel's slight edge of panic. He forced himself forward. 

For what seemed like eons to Castiel, the two of them stood side by side and stared. A literal ocean of blood stretched out before them, further than a human's eye could see, though Castiel could vaguely sense that it had an eventual end. The blood churned like water in some places, but Castiel noticed other areas where it looked coagulated. It bubbled, like there was something living inside it. 

A human body had about five liters of blood in it, his mind provided—knowledge of the world he had picked up somewhere along the way, filtering in. And how many gallons of it was there here? 

“This is what Bobby meant when he told me and Sam about Purgatory,” Dean said, finally breaking the silence. “Blood and bone. I thought...” 

Castiel glanced over. He hadn't missed the way that Dean's voice wavered when he said Bobby's name. He remembered he'd sat on those wooden steps and watched as Sam and Dean burned the flask and put the man to rest, although Dean didn't know about that. Despite that, Castiel felt a strange urge to reach out for Dean, to place his hand on something that was alive. He stopped himself. “You thought what?” 

“Well, I don't know. A lot of times, you hear stuff like that, you decide it's figurative. Not...” Dean waved out across the disturbing scene ahead of them. “Not like this.” 

“We'll need to walk around,” Castiel said, feeling his body slump in response. They couldn't dwell. If they never paused for long enough to think too hard on the things they saw, they wouldn't ever have to. “I can't perceive far enough ahead to transport us.” 

“It's better if we walk, anyway. We aren't gonna find anything to play twenty questions with if we keep jumping ahead. And I don't want to end up landing in a pile of monster guts or something.”

Aside from his attempt at humor, Dean was right. While it would be suicide to do anything but avoid the mindless beasts that wanted only to tear into them, both of them held some slight hope that there were other, more sentient things out there—and that at least one would know something. 

They found the edge of the pool and started to move around it in silence. However, after a few minutes Castiel felt a presence, uncomfortably close, and both he and Dean stopped dead, on instinctive alert. 

The blood, which Castiel had noted bubbling and popping like polluted swamp water since they'd started their trek, began doing so in a much more concentrated way. And then, something started to breach the surface. 

Dean yanked him away and ducked behind an outcropping of rock. They watched in both horror and anticipation, and Castiel could tell that Dean was making efforts to take breaths as infrequently and silently as possible as the monster emerged.

Castiel first saw matted hair, draped over eyes that had sunk back in the creature's head. The empty sockets were filled with blood, which poured down a face that made a valiant attempt to look human and fell short somewhere. It took a moment to realize, but its skin was scaled, and its torso eventually developed into a massive tail. It slid forward, closer to them, and then Castiel could see that from its mouth jutted two fangs, likely filled with venom. Both of its hands came equipped with five razor-sharp claws. Naturally, it was covered in blood, as if it had gone to bathe in it, or perhaps had been born from it (was that how monsters came to be here?) and was now drying itself out on the reddened sand. 

“What the—” 

“Lamia,” Castiel said quietly. By now, he already knew what Dean was going to ask. For being a hunter, there was a lot that Dean still didn't know. Then again, he also wasn't accustomed to the creatures he fought looking quite this grotesque. 

When it became clear that the lamia had no plans to move from this spot, Castiel pressed his hand against Dean's lower back, urging him to start moving away from the monster. Dean nodded and started to stand, but his boot scraped through the gravel underfoot, making a racket so loud that Castiel wanted to wince. 

The lamia snapped its head in the direction of the noise, blood thrown from it like a dog shaking off water. 

“Shit,” Dean hissed. 

Castiel stood. 

There was no choice then but to fight, and so they sprang out from opposite sides of the rock in unison, Castiel holding his blade, Dean his stake, as they attacked it as a team. The two of them had fought side-by-side countless times, but while working with Crowley, Castiel had made efforts to distance himself. It had been too long since it had felt this natural. Why did it take being trapped in Purgatory to return to this point? 

Castiel lunged forward and swiped his blade across the lamia's chest, causing it to screech and swing its tail around frantically. It caught him on the side of his left leg, the force strong enough to send him crashing to the ground. 

It left him open to further attacks, but he rolled out of the way right before the monster managed to rake its claws down his chest. As Castiel pulled himself to his feet, a strange static started in his head. 

He ignored it—his mind wasn't worth trusting lately—and slid his way to the lamia's side. Dean was suddenly shoulder to shoulder with him, and when the lamia jerked its head forward, Castiel ducked and Dean buried his stake in its neck. 

The static hadn't left, and hidden behind it Castiel could almost swear he heard a voice. He took a step back and watched as the lamia writhed and bled from Dean's stake, though somehow it was still vertical, still aiming to draw blood itself. 

Castiel concentrated on the voice. He could barely make it out, like it was a bad radio signal, broken up by interference: _“Cas? … hear me?”_

It was only a split second that he paused, but that gave the lamia enough time to move toward him again, claws extended. Castiel pulled up his blade instinctively and the claws clashed against it, curling around it in attempt to bend it apart. 

Dean came in from the side with his stake again and stabbed it in the same place, granting Castiel an opening to free his blade and press forward with it. Together, the pushed the lamia back until it had no choice but to retreat toward the large body of blood. 

The lamia screeched and slid under the surface as it swam away, blood splashing around the movements of its powerful tail. 

They stood there and caught their breath, watching until they couldn't track the creature's movement under the surface any longer. 

“Look, I get not being completely sanitary, but that is so beyond a health violation,” Dean commented as he let his arms fall to his side. 

As if in response to that statement, a small wave of blood crashed up against the shore, soaking their shoes and the bottom of their pants. 

“Oh, god _dammit_!” Dean snarled as he grabbed for Castiel's arm and led him away from the shoreline. “I swear I'm gonna have AIDS by the time we get out of this place.” 

Castiel was still distracted—he couldn't quite shake what he'd just heard, even though the voice had faded away. Three words, but he knew who'd spoken them, now that he had a moment to think about it. Having allowed himself to be dragged for a few seconds, he came to his senses and worked himself out of Dean's grip. It wasn't hard; even here, Dean was a man and he was an angel. “Dean,” he said firmly. 

“I mean, a friggin' blood ocean? Whose messed up idea was that?” 

“Dean.” 

“How the hell does something like that even _happen_?”

“ _Dean_.” 

Dean rounded on him. “What?” 

“It's Sam,” Castiel said. “He... attempted to pray to me.” 

Dean stared back, suddenly speechless. Castiel wasn't always correct with his analysis of facial expressions, but he could still see past that sometimes, to the soul beneath. From what he could tell, Dean was feeling a mix of guilt and relief. 

Granted, guilt always lurked under Dean's skin, hiding in the cracks of his soul, between blood and tendons and the walls of his heart. 

Castiel tried to regain control of his thoughts. He shook his head and forced his mouth to make words. “My guess is that he's currently attempting to find a way to get us out.” 

“Of course he is,” Dean said with an exasperated roll of his eyes. “How's he think that's gonna turn out?” 

“He must feel quite lost.” Castiel knew the feeling. He remembered how it'd felt when he'd had no one to turn to, or had at least felt that he didn't. Being left to make choices on his own clearly hadn't led anywhere good. He stared down at the bottom few inches of his pants even while they walked, the white hospital uniform now soaked in red. It seemed that no matter what he did to avoid conflict, he was always going to be dragged in, feet first. 

“Yeah,” Dean admitted with a sigh, his brow furrowing in that protective way. It was an expression he only took on while thinking of Sam. “Still, we know what happened when you opened the door. What if more of these things get out?” 

Having moved far enough away from where they'd last seen the lamia, Castiel stopped and eased himself down onto a rock. His gaze moved down to his hands. He remembered when he'd sat this way on a park bench, when he'd turned to his Father for help, but he had no expectations of Him now. He, Dean, and Sam were the only people he could truly rely on, and he could barely trust himself these days. 

“If we don't want to spend the rest of eternity here, the door will need to open one way or another,” he said. “I do think it would be best if we do it from this side. I should be able to keep most of the creatures here at bay.” Or, if necessary, he would stay here with them. The corrupted left with the corrupted. It made sense. 

The leviathans presented a larger concern, but thus far he hadn't seen any here. Castiel hadn't forgotten Dick Roman, but if the creature that had stolen that man's name had been banished here with them, it hadn't come looking for revenge. 

Perhaps it had learned its lesson. Or perhaps it was biding its time. 

Before Dean could respond, Castiel pressed on. “However, if we can find a way to communicate with Sam, he'll be a great help to us. He could tell us when the next solar eclipse would be.” 

At first, Dean looked like he might protest. Castiel could guess why. On top of Dean being protective, the truth was that Sam had already done enough, but Castiel knew that Sam would make efforts to free them whether they asked or not. It would make more sense to give him a specific task, one that in the long run was less dangerous than whatever he might try on his own. 

The look faded from Dean's face and he nodded. “Yeah, you're right. Sammy's gonna get involved no matter what we do, so we might as well make use of it. You think you can get through to him?” 

“I might have a way,” Castiel responded with a nod. “But we'll need to find a place to rest first.”

Dean shifted his weight and kicked his feet against the ground a few times, trying to get some of the blood off his pants—a completely futile action.“Okay, and after we do that? Let's find some actual _water_ so I can wash off and feel like a human being again.” 

Castiel couldn't argue with that, especially since any attempts he'd made to clean either of them had been ineffective. He didn't know if they would actually be able to locate any clean water, but certain monsters lived in bodies of water—hopefully that ocean of blood wasn't all this place had to offer.

“If Sam tries to contact me again, I'll of course let you know,” he said after a pause.

Dean nodded and stepped forward, extending his hand to him to help him up. “Yeah, you better. Knowing him, he'll try another ten times at least.” His mouth quirked then, as if he was enjoying some sort of personal joke. 

It was the closest that Dean had gotten to a smile since they'd arrived here. Castiel wasn't surprised that Sam was the cause of it. After a brief pause, he grabbed for Dean's hand and let him pull him up to his feet. For a split second, their faces were mere inches away, but then he remembered—personal space—and pulled back. 

They kept walking.

\--- 

They didn't find any bodies of water, but after trudging through mulch and sand, all saturated with blood, so strong Castiel could smell it, they found the other side of the pool, or lake, or whatever word would fit best. Words likely didn't exist to describe Purgatory, as most of its denizens didn't speak. Dean took to calling it the “real Red Sea,” which caused Castiel to roll his eyes. Leave Dean to take a religious landmark and sully it.

Castiel remarked that there was no comparison. When Dean said that he wouldn't know and stared off, Castiel made a silent promise to himself that he would show the Red Sea to him if they ever left this place. Even if Dean disliked Castiel's method of travel, it didn't seem right that the man had seen more of Purgatory than his own realm. 

They struggled up a small hill—on the other side of it, what looked to be an expansive field sprawled out before them. Beyond it, far enough that he had to squint to make it out against the dark backdrop, stood a mountain. 

“Dean, do you see that?” he asked, lifting a hand to point it out. 

Dean stared out for a few seconds and then nodded. “Yeah. That looks a lot taller than the one we climbed up before.” 

That was due to the fact that Castiel had flown them part of the way, but Dean's point still stood. However, this mountain called out to him in a much more obvious way. “At the top of that mountain... I can sense that the barrier between Purgatory and Earth is very weak there.” 

Dean snapped his gaze to him. “It is? So that's—” 

Castiel nodded. 

“Right. So we have to scale a mountain before we get to go home. Color me surprised,” Dean said. With a frustrated sigh, he trudged down toward the field. 

Castiel followed, though he couldn't shake the thought that they wouldn't be leaving this place unless they climbed that mountain _and_ got to the top before the next solar eclipse. The sooner he could communicate with Sam, the better. 

As they approached the field, Castiel spotted strange indentations in the ground, dark spots and misplaced earth. The earth had been burrowed open, almost as if some large creature had mowed its way through it, offering passage. What reason could there be for such a thing? Castiel had the distinct feeling he didn't want to know. “It's a series of tunnels,” he said once he realized. 

“What do you think even lives in there?” Dean asked uncertainly. 

“Nothing _lives_ in this place, Dean,” Castiel responded as he moved forward. 

“You know what I mean,” Dean grumbled, unable to keep the exhaustion out of his voice. “And wait, hold on—do we really want to go in there?” 

No. That was the short answer. Castiel turned to Dean, wiping what he thought was a mix of dirt and blood from his forehead. “We could try to go another way, but our options are limited.” 

Steep cliff walls flanked them, and just the thought of trying to climb left him exhausted. Though he'd felt oddly tired since they'd left the cave. In his opinion, the tunnels were the easier option. 

Dean shrugged. “I'm just sayin', Cas, one of the first rules you learn on the road is you don't enter dark, enclosed spaces unless a safe word's involved.” 

And the first rule you learned as an angel was never to get too close to humans, Castiel's mind provided, but he bit it down. 

“If you really would rather scale those walls, then—” 

He was interrupted by the shrieking of a pack of winged creatures overhead. More harpies, or maybe something worse, but the clouds were hiding them for now. That likely wouldn't last long. He and Dean exchanged a look, and in a quiet agreement tossed aside the other options and raced for the tunnels. They found an entrance and let it envelope them without the chance to consider what dangers might lie ahead. 

Once the cries of the creatures outside faded, they started to wind their way through the dark passages. Castiel kept his eye on Dean all the while. He was a mess, one arm held protectively against his wounded side while he clutched his blood-encrusted stake with the other. Castiel realized that he couldn't look much better, but he'd at least avoided serious injury thus far. 

Dean palmed at his jeans pocket as if searching for something. “I can't see a damn thing,” he whispered. 

Castiel closed his eyes for a moment, pulling at senses from beyond his human form. It gave him a greater idea of what surrounded them, but also told him more than he wished to know. The soil was inundated with both blood and bone, the result of constant fighting over the same piece of land. It made him further aware of how that so-called Red Sea had come to be. 

“Follow me closely,” he said as he pushed past Dean and picked up the pace, ignoring the fatigue that continued to plague him. He stopped suddenly when they reached a dead end, and Dean walked right into his back, almost sending both of them to the ground. 

“Okay, look,” Dean snapped as he regained his balance, “I know you have these spider senses that let you know where to go, but some of us here are human.” 

Castiel frowned and tilted his head. “I'm not an arachnid.” 

“Cas, the point is... can't you make some kind of light somehow? I mean, halos and all that.” 

Dean was expecting things of him again. That, at least, was familiar. The solution to their problem came to Castiel quickly, and he manifested his blade. Before Dean could wonder why it was in his hand, Castiel inflicted a small cut near his left wrist. From it emitted a faint glow, but it was enough to illuminate the area around them.

“Cas, what the hell?!” Dean glared at him. 

“This is the easiest way,” Castiel responded, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. 

“ _Mutilating_ yourself is the easiest way?” Dean didn't look impressed. In fact, his brow was furrowed as if he was in some sort of distress. 

“I thought I told you before,” Castiel said plainly, shrugging his shoulders. “Always willing to bleed—”

“Shut up, Cas,” Dean snarled. “It's different when you're low on mojo.” It seemed that Dean had noticed that the few bruises that Castiel had acquired while climbing and running and fighting hadn't faded yet. Dean eyed the wound, though he couldn't look at it directly, his eyes too weak to bear glimpsing even a small part of an angel's true essence. 

“It's done now,” Castiel pointed out. “Let's not waste it.” 

While Dean didn't seem any happier about it, he'd gotten his light source, and so they kept moving. Castiel kept his forearm raised up at chest level to light the way, and Dean walked close near his elbow so that he could see where he was going. 

Sometimes they heard howls of hunger or pain in the distance, or felt the dirt walls shuddering around them, signaling the displacement of earth. When that happened Castiel tried to move them in an opposite direction. Each step forward took them further down, though, and it reached a point where even Castiel couldn't tell how far underground they were. Every sound was muffled by the large amount of soil above their heads. 

One dead end led them into a decently sized clearing, and instead of turning around to go back the way they came, Castiel felt his body sway as he leaned against a wall. 

“Please tell me we're making camp,” Dean said. Castiel looked over his shoulder and saw the dark circles under his eyes. 

Castiel had hoped they would find their way out of these tunnels before they rested again, but that clearly wouldn't be possible. At least this would give him a chance to try and contact Sam. He let himself sink to the floor and closed down the scope of his senses so that his mind wouldn't linger on the fact that he was sitting on the remnants of gore. 

The moment that he settled down, Dean kneeled next to him and stared at his wrist. The glow had slowly faded while they'd been traveling, which made it easier for Dean to look at now. “We should wrap that up.” 

Castiel closed his eyes and shook his head. In some ways, he would never understand this human. “I'm not prone to infection, and it's no longer bleeding. We also have nothing in the way of bandages.” 

Even with his eyes closed, he could feel Dean's rhetorical feathers ruffling. Castiel heard him suck in a breath, like he was ready to argue back, but instead he remained quiet.

For a moment, the distance between them felt like a chasm. 

When Castiel opened his eyes, he saw Dean leaned up against the opposite wall. “We can try to contact Sam now,” he told him. 

Dean snapped to attention. “Right. How do we do this?” 

“The usual methods won't work,” Castiel said, hoping to brace Dean. “We'll need to use something stronger.” 

“Some details would be nice, Cas.” 

Always so demanding. Castiel tried not to chafe against it. “Communicating by voice isn't possible, so we'll do it with the written word.” 

Dean laughed hollowly. “Do you have a pen on you?” 

“In blood,” Castiel finally announced. 

Dean looked back, nonplussed. “Well, naturally.” 

It wasn't ideal. They'd already lost blood while on the run (or Dean had, at least), but there was no other way that Castiel could think of. “I'll also need something that has a trace of Sam's essence on it. Do you have anything suitable?” 

Dean briefly looked like he was on the spot, but he dug around in his jacket pockets until he found his wallet. He started to page through it. “Knowing us, I probably have... yeah, here we go.” He pulled out a card and then scooted forward on his knees to hand it over. 

Castiel grabbed hold of an identification card with Sam's picture on it, along with a pseudonym. He could sense Sam's spiritual signature on it. “This should work.”

He set the card in front of him and then turned his attention to the cut on his wrist. He started to dig his nails in around the wound. 

“Cas!” Dean yelled, his tone hinting on reprimanding as he pulled close again. He almost looked squeamish, which struck Castiel as ridiculous considering where they were. 

“This is how it has to be,” Castiel said, his voice taking an edge to it as he lost his patience. Why did Dean keep hovering over him? Did he still not trust him? And if so, could Castiel even hold that against him? 

“Just—use the damn knife,” Dean shot back. “It's cleaner.” 

Castiel could do that, and so he made a cut. The resulting light got Dean to put distance between them again, and Castiel decided it might be better that way. “I'll keep the message short.”

Once enough blood had seeped out of the wound, Castiel mopped it up with his fingers and dragged them through the dirt next to the identification card, making letters. 

“What are you writing?” Dean asked. He craned his neck up, as if he could read it from where he was sitting. 

“Solar eclipse,” Castiel responded. “That should be clear enough, correct?” 

Dean paused for a moment as he thought it over. “May want to add a question mark at the end. But yeah, my nerdy brother should be able to go from there.” 

Castiel nodded and kept working, nicking his wrist and widening the wound when he needed more blood. “There,” he said once he'd finished, leaning back to admire his work. “It's done.” He stretched his hand over the soil and closed his eyes, concentrating on Sam's soul. The message then came alight for a few seconds before dissipating. 

“There goes nothing,” Dean muttered. 

“Now we just need to hope that Sam can figure out how to respond.” 

Dean glanced over and frowned. “How _does_ he respond?” 

“The same way I did.” 

“Wait, so you mean—with his blood?” 

While Castiel hadn't necessarily thought about it explicitly, he hadn't told Dean that part until now for a reason. The conflicted look Dean wore now convinced him that had been the right decision. 

“I don't like it,” Dean said with a shake of his head. 

“If there was another way, don't you think I would have said something?” No matter what he did, it wasn't good enough. Castiel fought between frustration at that and the belief that it was only what he deserved after everything he'd done. 

Dean eyed him for a few seconds before he slumped back against the wall. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I know. It's like everything in Purgatory is at least twice as annoying.” 

Castiel nodded. “Even Hell has a closer connection with Earth. Sam's prayers would have made it to me in full clarity there.” 

Without warning, an awkward silence descended over them. When Dean shifted in place, Castiel recognized his mistake. Since their arrival, he'd hoped to keep Dean's thoughts off of Hell, but now the word had been spoken and he couldn't take it back. 

“Maybe, yeah,” Dean said. Castiel noticed that he was wringing his fingers together, like a nervous twitch, but when Dean looked up again he had a smirk on his face. “Hey, now I've been to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. What do I win?” 

Castiel stared at him for a few seconds, blinking tiredly. His eyelids felt heavy, but his hope was that Dean wouldn't notice. “Do not pass go,” he said quietly. “Do not collect two hundred dollars.” He thought of the monopoly board in the hospital that he'd set up with all of the pieces and money, but had never actually played.

Dean looked at him like he was completely insane, and Castiel realized that wasn't entirely undeserved. 

He cleared his throat and continued. “Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be awarded anything.” 

“What a ripoff,” Dean groused. 

Castiel shrugged, because he couldn't say anything that would be a reassurance, and he'd learned that in those cases it was better to stay quiet. 

After a few moments passed, Dean let out a breath. “Look, we made it out of Hell. That means we can take this place, too.” 

That didn't reassure Castiel much. Hell was familiar. He knew of its rules, residents, and restrictions. While finding Dean and pulling him out had been difficult—and doing the same with Sam even more so—he had managed it. Purgatory was completely new to him, and he didn't enjoy learning as he went.

“I kind of thought they'd be similar,” Dean continued when Castiel offered no response, “but they're not, really.” 

Castiel's back straightened. Dean speaking about Hell was something that simply didn't happen. While he had a decent idea of what Dean had gone through while imprisoned there, he had never dared to ask for more details, and Dean had never offered them. 

Now that he had, Castiel knew that he had to be a comforting force, an anchor. He had to be a proper guardian. Or, if he wasn't strong enough for that anymore, he had to at least say something or it was possible that Dean would never open this door again. Castiel couldn't falter now, couldn't blurt out something nonsensical. He tried to think of Heaven to ground himself, of years spent there and of everything that made him Castiel. 

But what was that, exactly? Once, it had been duty, and loyalty to a single God, but everything had changed. Some things had been added, others had crumbled and fallen apart. He didn't know which parts had been pasted onto him and which ones belonged. 

For that reason, he attempted to keep it simple. “Purgatory seems to... sprawl more.” 

“I guess so,” Dean said, but his discomfort stood out even to Castiel. He seemed to be incapable of eye contact at the moment. “I mean, here we've just been roaming around. Sure, stuff's wanted to kill us, but back in Hell? There was no way I would've been left alone. Not unless I was restrained somehow.” His face was pinched, imprinted with bad memories. 

“You sold your soul,” Castiel stated. “And you're a Winchester. Michael's vessel, the first seal. They had to keep a close eye on you.” 

Dean bit his lower lip and forced out a sigh, as if each title Castiel had given him just added more weight onto his shoulders. “Right. The righteous man, who broke in Hell.” But then the pained look on his face faded, and he smiled slightly. “Gotta say, though, I think I may prefer this place.” 

“Why?” The question came out before Castiel thought over whether it was wise or not to ask.

“Well, for one thing, I'm not alone this time.” Dean finally looked over and shrugged. 

The uncertainty Castiel had felt earlier dissipated briefly. There Dean sat, covered in blood and grease, but there was a sheen to his eyes that meant one thing to Castiel: hope. 

Castiel didn't understand how Dean could still have faith in him, but that forgiveness he'd spotted before all this seemed to have been genuine after all. He stared down at the wound on his wrist, at his stained, borrowed clothing, and saw nothing of worth. “I'll do whatever's necessary to get you home.” 

“To get _us_ home,” Dean insisted, trying to meet Castiel's gaze. For once, Castiel resisted. 

“Home,” he echoed. “I don't think I have one anymore.” 

Dean frowned and stared down at his lap for a moment, oddly contemplative. They weren't in a position to be having a conversation like this when something could come after them at any second, but somehow it had happened anyway. Maybe that meant it was overdue. 

“I get that, man. I do. But home's what you make of it. I had to learn that the hard way.” 

Castiel thought about that cabin they'd stayed in, about the wrinkles he'd seen on his hands after he'd washed the dishes. He thought of Dean's car, which smelled of oil and bad food and thrummed with music, and wondered if he could truly be a part of any of that. 

It seemed both far away and impossible, and yet he realized that if they did make it back to Earth, he had no idea where else he would go. 

“In any case,” Castiel said after a long pause. Dean's head snapped up, and Castiel realized he'd been dozing off. It must have been another one of those moments when his mind had cast itself away and he'd lost track of the time passing. “You'll see Earth again. And Sam.” 

“Yeah, Cas,” Dean said as scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “I know.” 

Castiel didn't respond, but instead watched as Dean's eyes fluttered closed, as his breathing evened out and he shifted against the tunnel wall behind him. Castiel could have sat there for hours, but his own exhaustion was insistent and something about the rhythmic way that Dean's chest moved up and down was utterly calming. 

As much as Castiel tried to remind himself that they were in danger, that he needed to be Dean's guardian angel—as he'd appointed himself, even when he'd been rubbing shoulders with Crowley—and keep an eye out, his vessel had other ideas. For a moment he thought of Daphne, of how she had pressed her body against Emmanuel's. He remembered how the feel of her breathing had lulled him to sleep. 

Dean inhaled, and then Castiel exhaled in turn. Somehow, the warm embrace of sleep overtook him even in this dead space, this blood-soaked land. As the glow from his wound died out, he drifted away into unconsciousness.

\--- 

“ _Shit_!”

Dean's voice snapped Castiel out of his sleep instantly, before he even completely registered that he'd lost consciousness in the first place. 

While it was practically pitch dark at this point, his eyes adjusted quickly. His gaze fixated on Dean, sprawled on his back on the floor and surrounded by—well, at first all Castiel could perceive was their wings, black and torn, illuminated by red, glowing eyes, which was a trait nearly all of the monsters in Purgatory seemed to hold in common. 

He felt Jimmy Novak's weak heart pounding in his chest as he scrambled to his feet, his blade in hand like it was second nature. (And wasn't it? The figurative calluses on his hands had never left, not even after months in an institution.) 

One of the monster's heads snapped toward him, and he didn't need to rely on the sight of fangs contorting its face (as if they were too big for its mouth) to realize what it was. 

“Vampires.” 

“Yeah, the extra fugly version,” Dean coughed up from the floor. 

Castiel seriously questioned Dean's insistence on provoking the group when there was five of them compared to their two, but there wasn't time to comment on it.

“Funny you would say that,” one of them hissed. Its voice was distorted as it talked around the fangs, inhuman in a way that made Castiel's skin crawl. “Seeing how you could have been here with us, _Dean_.” 

Castiel stiffened in place. What did that mean? Was it a reference to all the times Dean had cheated death? Castiel hadn't expected them to talk, let alone to recognize them—or Dean, at least. On the other hand, he was surprised that it hadn't happened sooner. He and Dean weren't exactly unknowns when it came to the world of monsters. In fact, what they were mainly known for was killing the things, but...

Until now, the beasts that had come after them had only seemed to target them because they passed through their territory, and none of them had expressed an emotion besides an overwhelming hunger, a need to kill. These, on the other hand, were sentient and had obviously tracked them specifically. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean said from his position on the floor, making an effort to sound threatening even though one of the vampires had its clawed hand pressed down on his chest to hold him in place. Castiel was almost certain he heard a knowing lilt in Dean's tone, though. Even if Dean was playing dumb, he clearly knew who these vampires were—or had an idea, at the least. 

Another one of the vampires crouched down toward Dean, and Castiel felt his muscles tense, ready to jump into action the moment they tried to hurt him. He eyed the creature's smooth, ash-colored skin, its tattered wings, its clawed feet. What better home for a vampire than a place where they could feed on the blood of others for all of eternity? That giant pool of blood behind them had to be a special treat for these things. 

He also noticed how it was eyeing Dean's neck. Turning him would likely be impossible in this realm, but it wasn't a theory Castiel wished to test. 

“I can't believe you wouldn't remember the vampire that turned you. In fact, I'm kind of hurt,” it spat, a black tongue sliding out to lightly touch at its fangs. 

Dean stared up at the creature, and suddenly his eyes were shining with equal amounts fear and anger. “You've got to be fucking kidding me.” 

Castiel could barely believed what he'd heard. Dean, turned into a vampire? The creature wasn't bluffing, which meant it was true, and yet it was news to Castiel. How could he have not known this before now? Sam and Dean should have called him in such a situation, which meant it had likely happened when he'd been making a conscious effort to distance himself from the two; when he'd been paying Crowley more visits than them, when looking the Winchesters in the face had made him feel weary. 

The vampire's laughter forced Castiel out of his thoughts, the deep tone seeming to vibrate through to his core. While he would have been able to turn these things to dust with a mere touch back on Earth, here it was a game of trial and error. But he was prepared to react and find out for himself at a moment's notice. 

“Since when have you known vampires to be the joking type?” the vampire asked, sneering down at Dean. Drool dripped from its fangs onto Dean's face, and Castiel flinched in unison with him. 

“Far as I can tell,” Dean responded, and Castiel admired the way he was able to recover so quickly, “you guys should be thanking me. There's no sun in Purgatory.”

“Oh, we can _thank_ you,” one of the other vampires cut in, shifting its wings as it moved closer. Castiel almost mirrored the movement, but one of them had its red eyes fixed on him like a hawk. If he made a move, it would have to be faster than what they could keep up with, but vampires were known for their reflexes. They had wings to match him now, but surely they would be nothing compared to his. 

“How the hell did you change back, huh? How'd you undo it?” the vampire demanded.

Had they tracked them here to find out that and that alone? Castiel realized that if Dean had only prayed, _he_ could have healed him, but he'd obviously found some other way. 

Dean grinned up at the grotesque face hanging over him. “There's a cure. You need the blood of the vamp that turned you,” he said, at which point his gaze slid over to the one who had owned up to that honor earlier, “and more importantly, you need to have not had a drop of blood. Something you greedy mooks wouldn't have been able to pull off.”

The vampire that was posed over Dean took offense to that—it lifted up its leg, which rippled with lean muscle beyond any human structure, and then, without warning, slammed its clawed foot into Dean's stomach. 

Dean's scream echoed through Castiel's head, and all of his protective instincts kicked into gear.

“Enough,” he said, voice booming in the enclosed space. He moved away from the wall and threw his arm out. Power coursed through the limb and memories flooded back through him with a startling clarity, just like the day when he'd left Emmanuel behind. How many times had he protected Dean in this way? How many more times would he?

The vampire went crashing into the opposite wall with enough force to rain dust down on their heads. All four of the others turned toward him then, but he didn't view it as a threat. Their attention had moved from Dean, and that's what mattered. 

“We're not here to listen to your taunts,” Castiel hissed, ignoring the fact that he and Dean were the ones who had been ambushed. A good soldier knew how to take control of a situation, even at a disadvantage, and it seemed that old habits were hard to shake. 

Now that he was fighting for Dean's safety, he felt stronger, his mind sharper. He'd wondered before what made him “Cas,” and he got the feeling this was it. The thought bolstered him. “I want to know one thing, and one thing only.” 

“And what's that, angel?” One of the vampires crossed its arms over its chest, and the mannerism was so human that for a moment Castiel thought he could sense phantom remnants of the monster's soul, hints of the person it had been before it had taken its first taste of human blood. 

He shoved it away. There was no time for sympathy now. 

Castiel forced himself to keep his gaze off of Dean. He was desperate to know how badly he'd been injured, but that would have to wait until they were out of danger. “We don't plan to remain here with you abominations. During the eclipse, a link between Purgatory and Earth is formed. When does that happen?” 

The one he had punished chuckled in response as it tried to pull itself to its feet. “You're gonna try to get the door open? What, you didn't have enough fun with that the first time?”

“Yeah,” another, quiet until now, suddenly spoke up. “We heard what you got up to. Taking after daddy, are we?” 

At that jab, he and Dean reacted instantly. For both of them, that had crossed a line. As Castiel rushed toward the one that had spoken, filled with hope that he could somehow kill something that was already dead, Dean finally regained hold of his stake and jumped to his feet to stab out blindly with it. From the sounds of it, his stake had stabbed into something, because Castiel heard a piercing shriek somewhere over his left shoulder. 

He didn't concern himself with that. Castiel's hand slammed into the vampire's forehead, and he let out a burst of divine power. Light flooded the room and burned out the eyes of the one he was targeting. A thrill rushed through Castiel then, and the part of him that had tried to renounce violence was crushed under the instincts of a born soldier. 

When the light faded away and Castiel's vision cleared, the sight of all five of the vampires writhing on the ground greeted him. Dean had also been blinded, but even if he was off-balance, he was standing. 

“ _Cas_!” he called out, and as Castiel moved toward him, Dean grabbed for the crook of his elbow. “Get us the hell out of here!” 

Castiel didn't have to be told twice; he spread his wings.

\--- 

They landed in a forest. While Castiel didn't feel very steady flying here, like a bird caught in a storm, he'd made sure to aim ahead of them, closer to the mountain. They hadn't gone backward and they'd escaped the vampires, which was what truly mattered.

With Dean wounded, Castiel had to offer him support as they stumbled through the forest, but after some careful searching they found shelter in the hollow of an enormous tree. Much like everything else here, Castiel could tell that the tree was completely dead, but despite that it still stood, almost proudly. It was old—impossibly so—to the point that he suspected that perhaps it had been here since this realm had come into existence.

Purgatory was supposedly older than even him. Older than God? It seemed inconceivable, but maybe that was a singular way of looking at the world. It was hard to shake off all of the ingrained beliefs he'd held on to when he'd still been a proper angel. 

Castiel realized that his mind was running away with itself again, and tried once more to focus. As Dean moved away from him and eased himself down, Castiel dragged his hands through his hair in a futile attempt to dislodge the dust from the tunnels. 

Holing up in a hollow meant they were cramped, but they both still had enough space to stretch out. Before long, Dean set about taking stock of his wound. 

Castiel watched, face knit with concern, as Dean pulled up his shirt and revealed a bloody mess of jagged gashes where the vampire's claws had dug in. Dean's skin had been shredded to ribbons from the deep lacerations that ran up his abdomen in parallel lines.

When Dean caught him looking, his mouth quirked up. “It's not as bad as it looks,” he said stubbornly, but the weakness in his voice told a different story. 

“Dean, if we don't tend to your wounds properly we're going to reach a point where you won't be able to move on,” Castiel said firmly. While his weakened state meant that Castiel had earned a bruise on his side and some scratches on his face and neck, none of it compared to Dean's injuries. In fact, Dean's wound only seemed to bleed more the longer they left it alone. While Castiel wasn't educated in human biology, he'd watched enough mortals torn apart and bleeding to recognize a bad wound when he saw one. 

“Yeah?” Dean said, huffing out as he tried to manage the pain. An image of him suspended in Hell, screaming in agony, rushed through Castiel's mind without permission. He dug his nails into the palm of his hand and tried to burn out all of those stray thoughts. 

No longer willing to tolerate Dean's flippant attitude about his physical state, Castiel pushed up onto his knees and then inched toward Dean so that he could get a closer look at the wound. “We need to bind it somehow.” 

“Please, Cas, tell me where you plan to find a friggin' first aid kit,” Dean forced out as he winced his eyes closed.

Without warning, Castiel grabbed at the bottom of his shirt and ripped until a decently sized strip came free. It meant the bottom portion of his torso might be left exposed, but that didn't bother him. Before Dean could respond to what he'd done, Castiel leaned over him and tried to work his hands under his back so that he could pull the cloth tight around the wounded area. 

It wasn't like the hospital uniform belonged to him in the first place. He understood that the trenchcoat was off-limits—Dean had made that clear enough—but the rest of his clothing didn't have any value to it as far as he was concerned. He'd tear off pieces of his shirt until none of it was left, if need be.

“Cas, what—are you serious?” 

“Dean,” he said, speaking clearly, “do you want to end up trapped here? Or do you want to make it out and see Sam?” 

Dean stared up at him with slightly clouded eyes. He didn't seem to have a good response to that.

Since that was as close as Castiel was ever going to get to Dean outwardly accepting his help, he continued working. He kept his ears trained on any outward noises that could indicate they'd been followed, but they were in the clear so far. 

He watched his hands spread the cloth of his shirt until it covered most of the wound and then let out a sigh. Dean had fallen silent for too long, and he needed to keep him aware until this was done. “That was impulsive of me,” he said. 

“What was?” 

“Flying us out of there.” 

“Cas, I'm the one who told you to get us out. I think getting curb-stomped by a vampire once is enough for a whole lifetime.” Dean shifted under his hands, trying to make it easier for him to work the cloth around. The white fabric slowly spread with red.

“We could have questioned them further,” Castiel pointed out as he twisted slightly to grab the other end of the bandage and pull it around. “It's possible one of them would have given us the information we need.” 

Dean laughed humorlessly and shook his head. Castiel noticed Dean's forehead, shining with sweat, and lifted his hand up from the wound to wipe it away. He felt the moisture, the worrying heat there, and wished that there was more that he could do. 

Then he saw how Dean closed his eyes to the touch, and realized he might have breached the personal space Dean so strongly valued. But if Dean's eyes were closed, was that truly a bad sign? Did he feel content and safe in this moment, or was it just a means of escape? Dean had worked himself into a very dangerous position, and with a celestial being he could hardly trust. Who would want to face that reality?

Before, Castiel had touched Dean's forehead to help him, to send him away from danger. But much time had passed since then.

“Dude,” Dean mumbled as his eyes opened and he smacked Castiel's hand away. “I'm not some sick kid.” 

“My apologies,” was all Castiel could say. He remembered when Daphne had fallen sick at one point, confined to their bed. He'd taken her soup and rubbed her back until the nausea went away. 

But no, that had been a ghost. A figment. 

Dean drew the back of his hand across his forehead. “Anyway,” he said, doing a rather spectacular job of changing the subject, “I chopped the heads off of every last one of those freaks while I was also vamped up and _way_ less used to it than the rest of 'em. They weren't exactly my buddies, all right?” 

Castiel tried to focus on the real topic at hand. Of all the vampires to run into, the one that he himself had slain would have been ideal. She had begged for death, and he had a feeling that she would have been willing to help them. 

It still hadn't sunk in completely that Dean had briefly been a vampire. “If you'd ingested even one drop of blood, you would have been one of them,” Castiel said quietly, not even fully aware that he'd paused in the bandaging. What if Dean hadn't been curable? Crowley likely would have come to Castiel and told him that now Dean was a commodity, a way to Purgatory. Easy access to the world of monsters. Anger and guilt ran through Castiel like a strike of lightning, and he realized that his hands had started to shake. 

Luckily, Dean didn't notice, as he'd turned his face away, and Castiel watched as his jaw tightened under his skin. “I wouldn't have slipped,” he said. 

Dean was lying. It was clear in the way that he wouldn't make eye contact, how he unknowingly ran his tongue over his gums, where the fangs must have once been. He could almost see Dean's self-loathing swirling under his flesh, like a concentration of red, pulsing pain. It was more obvious than the blood staining the bandage. 

Dean didn't completely trust himself, and that was something Castiel could relate to. 

“What I want to know,” Dean said, quickly changing the subject, “is how they snuck up on us. I mean, you should have felt them coming from a mile away, right?” 

With the bandage wrapped tightly around Dean now, Castiel finally removed his hands from the wounded flesh and leaned back, settling down on his feet, which had been folded under him. The distance between them was still close, but they didn't have much space to work with and he wanted to keep a closer eye on Dean. 

Answering the question would wound his pride, and so he let the silence stretch out for longer than he should have, to the point that Dean finally raised an eyebrow. 

“I... believe I fell asleep,” Castiel said at length, his voice only a hush. 

That caused Dean to push himself up slightly, which Castiel wished he could stop. His hands twitched forward briefly, wanting to ease Dean back down like a wounded animal, but he held back. 

“ _You_ fell _asleep_?” Dean forced out, sounding legitimately baffled. “Dude, the only time I've ever seen you sleep, you were in the back of my car and that was because you'd done that suicidal banishing thing.” 

Castiel remembered it well, and his hand touched his chest where he'd carved the sigil. It had been a reckless, desperate move, but it had gotten the job done at the time. He remembered how in the institute he'd taken out the finger paint, had drawn those symbols in red over and over on pieces of paper. The doctors had stared at them with deep frowns etched into their faces. 

“Another aspect of Purgatory, it seems,” he replied after a pause. “While neither of us seems to require food, rest is another story.” 

“But you were up for a while before that, weren't you?” Dean countered. Castiel watched as Dean's face scrunched—he was likely trying to work out just how much time had passed since they'd arrived here, but that was impossible. Castiel had already tried.

“I fought off the fatigue for as long as I could.” He'd been feeling it since they'd left the cave that they'd first taken shelter in, like the sandman of myth had been stalking him, but had chosen to ignore it. There hadn't seemed to be any other choice, not when Dean himself needed to rest so frequently. 

“God, you're still an idiot,” Dean grumbled, rolling his eyes. “If you need to sleep, you need to sleep. No being the martyr. We'll do it in shifts.” 

Castiel nodded, even though he wanted to protest that he was an angel, that angels shouldn't need rest. He was so far from Heaven now that it hardly seemed to matter. “In that case, it's your turn.” 

“Bullshit.” Dean replied so immediately that it felt like a smack to the face. 

This, however, wasn't something that Castiel could simply let slide. “You've been injured.” 

“A vampire stepped on me. Big deal.” Dean crossed his arms, but despite his efforts to brush it off, he'd lost more blood than most humans could handle, and without a way to heal him, all they could do was rest. 

Castiel didn't know how safe they were here, but it had to be an improvement on the tunnels. He could hear distant sounds, but this was a more unorthodox hiding spot; hopefully that would work in their favor. “This isn't up for discussion.” 

“You sound like a friggin' teacher,” Dean grumbled. “No more telling me what to do, all right? I've been hurt a lot worse than this, so just... sleep.” 

Dean had a point, of course. Castiel was hardly an authority figure anymore. When they'd first met, he'd ordered Dean around without hesitation, as he'd been acting on orders from Heaven and he hadn't had any reason to doubt them. But when he'd turned his back on Heaven to fight on the side of “free will,” orders hadn't been necessary, from his side or Dean's. They'd been comrades, ready to put their lives in each other's hands, yet somewhere down the line that had fallen apart as well. It was easy to blame it all on Crowley, but Castiel knew that for the most part, he'd hardened up around Dean for his own reasons. 

And because of that, they were here. Near powerless, captured in Purgatory, surrounded by creatures that he'd once tried to hold within him, because he'd been greedy and prideful. It was true he'd spat them back out, but he must have lost some part of him as well, that day. Or maybe those souls had left a taint that he couldn't simply cut out. 

Now here he was, weak not only from injuries, but because he was tired in a way that went deeper than Jimmy Novak's flesh and bone. There was some part of him that longed for that hospital bed, where he'd been able to sleep all day and avoid the world if he'd wanted. 

That longing scared him.

For a moment, he thought about telling this to Dean, but he realized it would come out of nowhere. After all, Dean wasn't privy to the broken mind that laid behind the borrowed face of his once close friend. 

More than anything, what Dean wanted from him right now was trust, and Castiel realized that he owed him that much, and so much more.

“Fine,” he said finally. Dean visibly relaxed and that somehow made the agreement worth it on its own. “But if you find yourself losing consciousness, or you hear something approaching, don't hesitate to wake me.” 

“What do I look like, an idiot? I'm a hunter, Cas. I know how this works.” Dean waved him off, and while the action was weak, it was also insistent.

Castiel finally pulled back and settled against the old wood. For a moment, he felt a sense of camaraderie with it. It was just as old as he was, if not more so, and yet here it was, standing tall despite the fact that it was surrounded by an eternal battleground, populated by lost souls and steeped in blood. It had probably been covered in it—perhaps that was even what it needed to grow. Blood instead of water. 

Yes, Castiel thought as his mind sunk into the depths of sleep, he could relate to that.

\--- 

When Castiel woke to Dean still feeling weak and not being able to move much without hurting himself, he knew that they had no choice but to stay in this hiding spot until Dean could heal. It wasn't an easy decision considering they were on an unknown time limit, but that changed when, while Dean took his shift sleeping, letters started drawing themselves out into the inner bark of the tree.

Sam was speaking to them. 

Castiel knew better than to let Dean sleep through it and woke him. “Dean, it's Sam.” 

Dean shot up and then immediately regretted it. Even as he hissed in pain, he eyed the area groggily. “What? Where?” 

Castiel pointed to the bright wording, which had almost finished spelling itself out, and they sat in respectful silence as the message finished. It was simple and to the point: “TWO WEEKS.” 

“Thanks, Sammy,” Dean said with a nod to the words. “At least he didn't use too much blood doing that.” 

Dean was the one trying to heal from a severe abdominal wound and while he ran the risk of never leaving this nightmare land, but his first concern was still Sam. 

“Two weeks isn't much time,” Castiel said after a pause. 

“Yeah, which is why we can't waste any more of it.” Dean tried to stand, but he barely stayed on his feet for a few seconds before he slid back down to the ground. 

“Dean, don't,” Castiel said with a shake of his head. “I know you're used to pushing through things, but it can't work that way this time. We know how much time we have now, so we'll adjust appropriately.”

They needed a few more days here, at least, and so they continued to alternate shifts, though Castiel found that sleep disoriented him. When he was drifting in and out of consciousness, he felt less like himself. 

To try and keep his head on straight, he sometimes ventured out from the tree's hollow while Dean slept (he never strayed far enough that he couldn't sense Dean's soul as it rested) to search for anything that might make them more comfortable. Unfortunately, with not even the barest plants to pick or harvest, there wasn't much that he could do, and Dean protested the idea of him ripping up more of his shirt to change his bandage. 

Instead of getting better, Dean only seemed to be more bothered by his wounds, and he was never capable of sleeping for more than a few hours at a time. More than that, he refused to let Castiel look at the cuts to judge whether it was healing, as they had no other bandages to rewrap them. 

Castiel tried not to sleep much himself, but after one instance in which he'd managed it for more than just a few hours, a moan of pain woke him. He opened his eyes and saw Dean's face covered with sweat as he grimaced in pain. 

Castiel shifted up until he was sitting and then moved over until he was at Dean's side. “Enough. Let me see it.” 

The pain must have been bad, because Dean agreed to let Castiel unwrap the bandage, which he did as gingerly as possible. The gashes had closed up for the most part and the blood had dried and caked, no longer fresh and gushing out, but all of the skin around the cuts was inflamed, an angry red.

“It's infected,” Dean said with a sharp stare downward. “Friggin' vampires.”

Castiel didn't know how to heal a human wound the natural way, so he placed his hand on Dean's side and forced all of his energy into repairing him.

Nothing happened. 

“Uh.” Dean raised a brow.

Castiel pulled his hand away and swallowed. “What do you suggest we do?” he asked.

Dean had to know. This wasn't the first time he'd been hurt like this, though it was the first time he'd been so limited in resources. 

“Well, living like tree huggers isn't doing us any favors.” Dean pulled his shirt back down and closed his eyes as he regulated his breathing. 

An infection. Castiel knew it wasn't good, but what did it mean for Dean? Was it a death sentence? Had he failed in the one task he had left to him? 

Castiel didn't like the idea of traveling any long distances while Dean was in such a state. He could try to fly, grab Dean and aim straight for that mountain peak and hope for the best, but he realized it was impulsive. They could end up anywhere from a monster's den to that pool of blood if he missed the mark, and with the imprecise way he had to fly here, that was far too likely. If he made one wrong move, it might tip the situation from bad to unsalvageable. 

Castiel took a few quiet breaths and forced himself to stay calm. He had to, for Dean. 

“You must be tired,” he said. “Sleep. Try to regain some strength, and then we'll make a decision on how to proceed.” He yanked the bandage away and allowed the wound to breathe now that adding pressure to it wasn't a concern. It needed to be sutured—that much he could tell—but they just didn't have the supplies. 

For once, Dean didn't argue, but turned over and tried to make himself comfortable. He tossed and turned for a while and muttered a few words about how his eyes hurt, but eventually fell asleep. 

As Dean slept, Castiel wondered again where they could find some clean water. They could purify the wound with it and hopefully chase the infection out that way. In theory, a forest would eventually lead to a river of some sort, but he couldn't expect Purgatory to follow Earth's rules. 

Time passed (and Castiel was still trying to keep track, _two weeks_ running through his mind like a song played on repeat), but he spent most of it watching Dean. He could get lost in watching him breathe in and out—he labeled each cycle of it as a measure of time, and counted them, or made a mark with his nail on the ground for every bead of sweat that rolled down Dean's face. 

But then Dean started pitching around and groaning, sometimes coming dangerously close to rolling onto his stomach. Castiel moved forward to wake him; he grabbed for his shoulder and shook.

“Dean.” 

At first Dean protested by shifting away, but Castiel pulled him onto his back. 

Dean tucked his chin toward his chest and winced his eyes closed. “Get... away...” 

“Dean, it's me,” Castiel insisted. “Wake up. We need to—” 

One of Dean's eyes opened, but only a sliver, and only for a split second. But that was long enough for Castiel to see a flash of red that made his heart stop.

No, he must have been seeing things. His mind liked doing that now, playing tricks on him, and while everything from when they'd arrived in Purgatory onward had felt hauntingly real, this he couldn't accept. 

“Dean, please,” he said again, and his voice hitched unexpectedly. 

That caused Dean to wake up completely. He shifted up onto his elbows and Castiel forced himself to watch as his eyes opened.

The eyes that he'd stared into so many times were now red and slitted. 

Castiel jerked back, which unsettled Dean in turn. 

“What?” Dean asked as he tried to push himself up, wincing all the while. His eyes darted around and it was so surreal, so fundamentally _wrong_ , that Castiel could only stare for a few moments. “Cas, what is it?” 

At least Dean was still himself, his actions and words no different from before he'd slept. Castiel just didn't know how long that would last. 

They hadn't exactly been fastidious when it came to sanitation, but Castiel hadn't been prepared for this. He'd seen that shade of red of before—in the eyes of the harpies and vampires, in the blood of the lake. A failure to keep Dean safe had warped into a failure to keep him sane, and Castiel felt a choking dread in his chest. 

It was fear. It was an emotion he hadn't learned to recognize until recently. As a soldier of God, there had never been a reason to feel scared. He had followed his orders and that was all that had ever been expected of him. He hadn't been _attached_ to anything beyond the mission. Sometimes he wished for that simplicity, even though he knew that there was no way to return to it. 

Besides, that was what a coward would do, and Dean had been trying this whole time to teach him how to not be one. 

He swallowed the fear down for that reason. “This isn't a normal infection. You're... changing.” 

“Changing?” Dean's tone took on an urgent edge that Castiel didn't like. “What do you mean, _changing_?” 

“I would show you if I could, but suffice to say your eyes are no longer yours.” They hadn't yet come across anything with a reflective surface in this place, and Castiel had a feeling that was for the best. 

Dean reached up to press his fingers into his cheek right under the eye socket, teeth grit. “Then—then we need to reverse it, Cas.”

Castiel hesitated. Dean always made things sound so simple, perhaps because that made them easier to face, but there was absolutely nothing about their current situation that could classify as easy. “I would need to examine your soul more closely to determine if a cure is possible,” he said after a pause. 

Dean scrabbled up into a sitting position, and Castiel watched with concern as the muscles in his abdomen contracted. If Dean opened up his wound again...

“If one is _possible_?” Dean snarled, throwing one hand out in protest. “Cas, this ain't a question of maybe! There has to be a way!” 

There Dean went again, making those impossible demands. Why did he keep asking him for things when Castiel had proved time and time again that he couldn't deliver? He felt the energy drain out of him when it sunk in that he might end up failing Dean once again, and this time with results he could never hope to repair. 

“You can't always expect me to have the answers,” Castiel shot back, but instead of holding Dean's gaze he stared down at his hands, clenched tight over his thighs. 

“Yeah, well, right now you _do_ have to have them. You're the reason—” 

Dean cut off suddenly, and Castiel felt his stomach jump instead of his heart this time. “What, Dean?” 

“Forget it.” Dean brushed it off. “Look, if you need to examine my soul or whatever...” 

They both had to be recalling the same instance, when Castiel had searched Sam for a soul. On top of Sam ending up soulless because of his miscalculation, Castiel had hid that fact from both Sam and Dean until the last possible moment. He didn't like being reminded of it, but he couldn't fight back against it either. 

The best intentions led down the darkest roads, and this time the destination had been Purgatory. Dean had been brought along for the ride despite being the last person to deserve such a fate, and Castiel didn't know if that was something he could ever make up for. 

And now Dean was turning into a monster, and Castiel didn't know if he could stop that either. 

“I do,” Castiel said uncertainly, “and it will require you to hold still.” He had no idea if he could even access Dean's soul here in Purgatory, but he had to try. He had gained some practice with the process by now, seeing how he'd been handling more souls than he'd known what to do with for a time. But doing so with Dean was different, and he didn't feel comfortable with it.

Neither did Dean, apparently, if the way he closed his eyes (which was a relief for Castiel, at least, when they were that piercing red) and pressed his lips together was any indication. 

After rolling up his sleeves, Castiel clamped one hand on Dean's shoulder to keep him in place while he moved the other toward Dean's middle, slightly above his wound. Dean shuddered slightly under his grip as his breathing escalated, but Castiel couldn't focus on that now. He forced himself to clear his mind of Purgatory and the leviathans and his own mental damage and Heaven and everything but the task before him. 

He pressed his hand forward, and it pushed past flesh and tendons and muscle into something that went so much deeper than the physical. Dean screamed in strangled pain, but Castiel had to ignore it. It felt like an impossible task, but he pushed further in and watched Dean's skin light up. And then, finally, he reached it. 

It was almost exactly as he remembered—he was still struck by how bright it was despite the sheer amount it had been through. He felt the scars where it had been torn apart in Hell, jagged and impossible to heal. And while it was still as warm and powerful as it had always been, it had dark patches on it now. The infection was worming its way in and adding a slow taint. 

Part of Castiel wanted to stay here for longer, nestled up against Dean's soul, where words and expressions and betrayal didn't exist, where his Grace could resonate with Dean in an uncomplicated way, but he realized that it would be dangerous to remain any longer than was necessary. 

He pulled back, felt the world crash back down on him. Purgatory came back into focus with painful clarity—a land saturated with blood, overcrowded with souls that had killed and been killed so many times it was impossible to fathom. Castiel sucked in the old, oaky smell of the tree they were hidden in and placed his hands on the hard ground. 

Dean sat hunched before him, chest heaving from the pain, unnatural eyes tinged with hurt. 

“Holy shit,” he gasped. 

“My apologies.” Castiel bowed his head. “I should have been more careful.” 

Dean caught his breath. “It's fine. Can you fix it?” 

Dean looked so desperate, like he was hoping that the angel he knew, the one who he'd stopped the Apocalypse with, was hidden somewhere under the blood-soaked hospital scrubs and the worn-down expression. 

“I think so,” he said, though the momentary look of relief on Dean's face only hurt Castiel more, “but it would be very dangerous. For both of us.” 

“Define dangerous,” Dean demanded. 

Castiel sighed. At least he was used to trying to explain what he could do as an angel in human terms. “It's more likely I would be able to heal spiritual wounds rather than physical ones here, but the amount of energy it requires could be... implosive.” He flexed his wrist, trying to judge the power stored within one hand. 

“Okay, so you'll end up splattered. How about me?”

Castiel looked into those awful red eyes, because he needed to make this perfectly clear. “I would literally be burning the infection off of your soul, much like cauterizing a wound in human terms, and if I don't perform it just right it could kill you.” 

Dean gnawed at his bottom lip as he thought that over. 

“So what do we do?” he asked at length. “I mean, we could wait it out. I don't think turning works the same way here. Maybe it'll pass.” He shrugged and then rubbed at the side of his neck. 

Castiel didn't know how much longer he could handle looking at a monster's eyes on his friend's face. If circumstances were different, he'd gladly die to cure Dean, but he knew that Dean wouldn't be able to escape this place without him. They both had to make it to the peak of that mountain. Once Castiel pushed Dean to the other side, he could stop worrying about his own survival. 

“We can wait for a little bit longer,” Castiel replied after a pause, “if only to see how the sickness progresses. But it's vital we don't leave it for too long.”

“Okay, so we give it another few hours, and then you do your soul-cleaning trick,” Dean said with a firm nod. 

Castiel wasn't so sure. He shifted in place. “A few hours?” 

“Cas, maybe I can't see my own eyes, but just knowing is making my skin crawl. You either fix me or I turn into something, and I'm not gonna turn into something.” Dean shook his head fervently. 

“Or I try to fix you, and end up killing you in the process.” He jabbed a finger in Dean's direction. Castiel couldn't even imagine what he'd do in that case. If he wasn't already broken, that would surely finish the job.

“If I turn into something, then I'm gonna end up dead anyway,” Dean shot back.

Castiel didn't have a rebuttal. 

“Either way, I don't think sticking around here is going to do us much good,” Dean said as he tilted his head up to take in the open space of the tree above them. 

That Castiel agreed with. He already knew that an easy solution was wishful thinking, but the Winchesters had taught him how to believe in the impossible even with the odds stacked so harshly against them.

Castiel crossed his arms stubbornly. “We can move on, but only if you can stand.” 

Dean blinked up at him, which caused a shiver to race down Castiel's spine without his permission. Those eyes shouldn't be doing normal, human things. He had to return Dean to the way he was meant to be, no matter what the cost. 

“Maybe.” Dean braced his hand against the bark. “Only one way to find out.”

\--- 

It took some trial and error (which mainly involved Dean collapsing against Castiel a few times) before Dean admitted that there was no chance he could walk on his own. They maneuvered themselves into a position where Dean could wrap an arm around Castiel's shoulder and lean against his side, and that allowed them to walk effectively.

They staggered through the woods, Dean fighting to keep his balance and Castiel doing what he could to decrease the amount of noise they made. There were too many spaces in the trees where something could be hiding, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. Castiel kept looking over his shoulder, as if he could swear that there was some beast breathing down his shirt collar, and pinpricks of red in the distance caused him to jerk Dean behind the cover of a tree a few times. 

Instead of the normal sounds of a forest—owls hooting, the rustling of branches—he heard only heavy panting, the thunder of oversized paws, and the screeching and gurgling of something far past human. 

They made it about half a mile—which took much longer than it should have—when Dean suddenly slammed his hand into Castiel's chest and pushed him away. Castiel actually stumbled back, but Dean's strength shouldn't have even caused him to teeter. No, this was the kind of power he'd expect from a creature. 

Dean fell against a tree, one hand pressed tight against his mouth, and for a moment Castiel could only watch, overcome by helplessness. He wished he could do something, anything, and yet he was frozen in place. 

“What is it?” he finally asked, voice caught in his throat. 

“Shit,” Dean forced out in a pained rasp, muffled behind his hand. He twisted his body around so his back pressed against the tree, his reddened eyes wide and feral. 

When he gasped for breath, Castiel saw two elongated fangs where Dean's canines should have been. 

He fought not to step away. He'd dealt with plenty of fanged things since he'd started working with the Winchesters, but this was _Dean_. He knew how to kill a monster, not how to save it. 

This was all going too fast, and it had been wrong for them to wait at all. Castiel panicked as he imagined what might change next. Maybe the infection would target Dean's skeletal system, or maybe he'd lose his limbs entirely and become more serpentine, or grow fur and eventually start running around on all fours. The images jumped into Castiel's head unbidden and he clenched his fists tight at his sides, as if that would stop them. 

Worse than any physical change, though, was the possible degradation of Dean's mind, how he might lose any sense of self and become just as ravenous as the things he hunted. 

“We can't wait any longer,” Castiel said as he neared Dean, who made an effort to push him away, but was braced for it this time and caught his wrist. 

Castiel stared into Dean's morphed eyes. “We'll find somewhere more protected than here, and then... I'll do what has to be done.” He still didn't know if he had the strength to fix this, but he couldn't doubt himself anymore. 

“You might die,” Dean protested, his words slurred as he tried not to pierce his own lip open with his fangs. 

“If I don't try, you might kill me yourself.” 

Dean startled at that. Then his body sank. “...Fine. Okay. And Cas, if I do die?” 

No. There was no room for doubt. If Dean couldn't believe it, then Castiel would have to. “You won't. I won't let you.” 

Dean had taught him how to lie like this, and he'd reached a point where he could even believe his own deceit.

Dean almost smiled, but the curve of his lips was contorted by the fangs. “Since when are you the optimistic one?” 

“I'm not optimistic, just persistent. Now let's—”

He cut off when he heard something moving in the distance, and then _felt_ it, through the ground shuddering beneath his feet and his angelic senses. 

Dean's slitted eyes flicked toward the sound as he straightened.

They exchanged a look and then simultaneously crept in the direction opposite from where they'd last heard the noise. Castiel's blade appeared in his hand, and Dean pulled his stake up to the ready. 

Without warning, something immense smashed into Dean. Castiel fell back from the force of it and crashed into the hard ground. 

“Dean!” he shouted as his vision cleared. His head snapped in the direction he'd seen Dean fly, but all he saw was a long, sleek body covered in silver fur. Four massive paws dug into the dirt, and its tail shot out at a tense angle.

Castiel dragged himself to his feet and raced forward in search of Dean. As he got closer, he made out the profile of some sort of fox, with an elongated muzzle and—as had become predictable by this point—a mouth full of fangs.

Dean struggled beneath it, fighting for oxygen, most likely with a reopened wound. All that care they'd taken, out the window. 

With blade drawn, Castiel raced toward the fox, aiming to jab the tip into its flank and scare it off. His ineptitude had already gotten Dean badly injured and infected with something that changed him by the minute. He wouldn't—couldn't—allow any more harm to come to him. 

But before he reached the beast, Dean's voice stopped him. 

“Cas! Wait.” Even through a face white from blood loss—even with those red eyes and pointed fangs—Castiel recognized Dean's stubborn spirit in his expression. 

It caused Castiel to skid to a stop as his gaze darted from Dean to the monster. 

Dean attempted to shift himself out from under the fox so that he could look it in the face. “... Amy?” 

_So you recognize me._

The words weren't actually spoken, but transmitted across a wavelength, similar in a way to how angels communicated when in true form. Not that Castiel wanted to relate this monster that had Dean at its mercy to angels, but he couldn't deny the familiarity that buzzed through his head even after the words had faded. 

The voice, if it could be called that, registered as low, but also somehow female, and the way that it ran through his mind, almost if it was his own thought, made it impossible to ignore. Was this how Jimmy had felt, when he'd spoken to him? 

Dean was definitely riveted—his attention had stayed fixed on the monster since he'd spoken that name. 

If there had ever been an Amy in Dean's life, Castiel hadn't known of her. That wasn't surprising, as Dean had known many people, and not all of them had been worth mention. Most of the female names that had come up in relation to Dean belonged to women he'd been briefly intimate with and then moved on from without a care. That had been the case up until Lisa, at least, and Castiel had no idea who Dean might have met after that, seeing how he'd been too busy playing God and then suffering the consequences for that foolish decision. 

But whoever this Amy was—an old flame, as the human saying went, or the victim of one of the Winchester's more recent hunts—it hardly mattered now. Castiel already knew the most important thing about her, which was that she planned to kill Dean. She—it—had to be stopped. 

_Is this what I deserved, Dean?_ The fox moved backward and circled around Dean's body, tossing its head as if gesturing to the forest around them. _To end up in this place?_

“Amy,” Dean breathed, his eyes darting side to side to follow the fox as it walked. “I didn't know—” 

Castiel caught a flash of silver, and then the fox was on top of Dean again, its front paws crushing the ground on either side of his face as it forced its head down toward him. _Don't! Don't act like you didn't know where I'd go!_

Castiel jerked forward on instinct, but if Dean had stopped him before, it had to be for a reason, and he needed to honor that. 

“Fuck, Amy!” Dean yelled, his voice breaking. “I didn't know what else to do!” 

_What happened to my son? Do you even know?_ The creature's fangs hovered dangerously close to Dean's head, but when Castiel tried to take a step forward, both of their heads whipped toward him. This was clearly a private issue, something Castiel had no knowledge of. 

He tried not to let that bother him, but he had grown used to knowing all the details of Dean's life. Which angel wanted him dead, which demons he and Sam were currently hunting, even the state of his car. Not having the context when the stakes were clearly so high meant he had no idea how to respond, if he should throw caution to the wind and attack or wait to see what happened next. 

Despite the fact that Castiel's instincts told him he should fling his blade right at the beast's neck and ends this now, something about the tightness in Dean's shoulders gave him pause. 

_Did you even tell Sam what you did?_ The fox dragged its paw through the dirt right next to Dean's shoulder, as if it could barely stop itself from mauling him with it. 

Sam had something to do with this? Though almost as soon as Castiel asked himself that question, he felt foolish for it. Wasn't Sam always involved? 

Dean shook in place and closed his eyes. “Listen, I had no—”

_No. You can't hide from this, not here._

The fox pulled its paw up and let a single claw hover over one of Dean's infected eyes. _You're just like us._

The fox shifted and flashed and then suddenly appeared a good ten feet away, half hidden behind a tree.

It stalked through the brush, but piercing cries from overhead made it halt. It glanced up, and when Castiel mirrored the movement, he spotted a flock of winged monsters high in the clouds. 

The fox returned its attention to Dean. _When I first got here, I was killed, over... and over. I didn't know what I was being punished for. All I was trying to do was save my son._

Dean pushed off the ground and forced himself to sit up despite the tattered bandages around his middle. Castiel wanted to run to him, but stopped himself. 

“Listen.” Dean wheezed through the pain as he placed one hand to his heaving chest. “You _killed_ people. If you were trying to save your son, you were doing a pretty piss poor job of it.” 

_Oh, yes, because you know all about saving people._

Dean's hand dropped from his chest. He looked from the fox to Castiel, but only held his gaze for a second before he broke it and bowed his head. 

“No,” he said. “I don't.” He clenched his fist in front of him. “Why do you think I'm here?” 

Castiel frowned and shook his head. He wished he could let Dean know in that moment how many people he'd saved with his actions. Families that would have been torn apart by a monster's influence continued to live happily because of Dean. Earth itself was still turning because he and Sam hadn't turned away from the threat of Lucifer himself. How could Dean blame himself for lives that had been lost when that number would have been so much higher if it weren't for him? Why could he never comprehend his own significance? 

The fox huffed. _You think that your own suffering will make up for what you put others through, but it doesn't work that way._

The monster's jaws snapped as it howled—a bloodthirsty sound that resonated through Castiel's mind like the echo of a gong—and wove through the trees on its way back to Dean. 

That howl was the last straw. What if it had alerted other creatures in the area?

No, Castiel couldn't hold back any longer. He lunged toward Dean, but the moment he took a step the fox appeared in front of him, leering down with all of its bulk, jaws clenched in rage.

_And you. I've heard of you. Dean's angel. I kill a few bad people and my son grows up an orphan, but you unleash leviathans on Earth and you're still best buddies?_

Now that accusation rang true, unlike the claims this snarling beast had thrown in Dean's direction earlier. Castiel couldn't argue that he'd saved more people than he'd hurt. His own siblings had fallen to his blade, whereas Dean—no, Dean would have _never_ harmed Sam, not in a million years. How could Dean be friends with someone who'd turned on his own family? 

And when it came to family, it wasn't only the other angels. He'd been part of a new family—one that Dean, Sam, and Bobby had adopted him into—and he'd thrown that back in their faces, all for the “greater good.”

The fox's paw lifted up, impossibly fast, but Castiel jolted out of his thoughts at a dizzying speed. He sliced out with his sword and caught it between its claws. Sparks spat out as his blade clashed against them. 

But it was too strong. The claws pushed past Castiel's defenses and struck him in the chest, which knocked him backward into a tree. 

He slid to the ground, his chest exploding with pain. He sat there in a daze, vision black, until—

“Cas!” 

Castiel jumped to his feet in time to see the fox spin around and lift its claws to swipe at Dean. He envisioned it, how the thing would slice through Dean's neck, how his blood would gush out, how he'd lay there dead until he was reborn with red eyes, gnarled claws, mouth dripping with black spit.

Castiel forced himself up and flew forward. 

He landed on the creature's back and stabbed his blade into its spinal cord, staining the translucent shine of its fur a dirty red. The fox howled and darted forward with dizzying speed. Castiel was thrown off; he hit the ground and rolled across it. 

“Run!” he heard Dean call from nearby. 

Castiel laid his palms flat against the ground and pushed his body upward as he searched desperately for Dean. “We can't run,” he panted. He grabbed for a nearby boulder to lean against as he tried to stand.

Dean ran over and seized Castiel by the arm to help him up. “Why the hell not?” he demanded. 

The fox had to still be shaking off that stab wound, but it wouldn't be long before it recovered. 

“You should know better than anyone,” Castiel gasped. “This one won't stop. If we run, it will chase us until it's killed us both.” 

“ _She_ ,” Dean insisted, his fanged mouth pulled down into a distressed line. “It's a she. Fuck, Cas, she was Sam's—” 

Castiel caught the sound of heavy footfalls racing toward them. He pivoted and placed himself squarely in front of Dean, blade held out horizontally in front of him, as if it could be a shield rather than a sword. 

“Don't, you idiot!” Dean hissed behind him. 

Thus far, Castiel hadn't been able to kill anything in Purgatory, but he hadn't pushed himself to his limits. Everything here was already dead, but there were things worse than death. 

Like being burned out of existence.

The fox galloped forward, still bleeding but moving quickly. Its large tongue hung between its fangs, a horrible fire in its eyes. 

Castiel closed his eyes, tried to forget about the flesh he was inhabiting and pull from something much deeper. He only had scraps of power, but an angel's scraps were still not to be underestimated. He'd proved that many times before, though he'd been more whole, less damaged then. This was how he'd determine whether or not he was really, truly broken. 

He pooled his power somewhere in his chest, breathing it in and holding it there. Time slowed; he felt the shudder of one of the beast's paws as it hit the earth, and then a few seconds later, another. He felt the tips of Dean's fingers touch his shoulder. 

He opened his eyes, lifted his arm, and the light from his hand shined brighter than he'd expected. Brighter, and _sharper_. 

“Shield your eyes!” he yelled.

And then Castiel forced all of that divine energy onto one specific point, the center of the creature's chest. He needed to make sure that this monster, this _thing_ that would dare try to paint itself worthy of being Dean's killer, never bothered him again. Its silver fur and tight muscle dissipated quickly into the ether, and then its bones, until there was nothing left but dust. 

His arm fell to his side. He watched the dust float to the ground. He heard the wind cutting through the bare tree branches overhead. Each second still felt more like a minute. Dean's hand finally gripped his shoulder, and that was when time righted itself. 

“Holy shit,” Dean's voice came through to him. He used his grip to spin Castiel around until they were facing each other and then stared into his face. “Cas, are you okay?” 

Dean, always worrying about others when _he_ was the one in mortal danger..

In reality, Castiel did feel on the verge of collapse—his hands shook at his sides from the exertion and adrenaline, and his legs ached with the simple task of holding his weight—but they still weren't safe. He needed to fix Dean, and he needed to do it now. Castiel looped his hand around under Dean's arm to take hold of him. It was time to fly again.

\--- 

When Castiel landed, he heard the sound of rushing water.

It came from a waterfall, with a bridge of rock leading to it. It would have been a welcome sight if not for the current circumstances. 

Dean hunched at his side, still in Castiel's grip, but quickly wrested himself away and turned his back to him. Castiel let go, but moved up behind Dean as he doubled over. He could see the bones shifting in Dean's hand as his wrist jerked and his nails elongated into claws. 

“Shit,” Dean snarled, breathing hard as fell to his knees. “ _Shit_.”

“Dean!” Castiel grabbed the back of Dean's shirt collar and pulled him under an outcropping of rock. He pushed Dean to the ground and then knelt in front of him. 

He couldn't stop himself from looking Dean over, starting with his face—unwashed hair, cheeks smudged with dirt, and punctuated by those preternatural eyes. Dean's torso heaved, exposing the infected gashes that ravaged his flesh with each breath. 

Castiel could fix this, somehow. He'd taken Dean's soul, which had been tattered and twisted and tortured from thirty years of abuse, and he had made it anew. He had to be capable of doing it again. 

“Just do it, Cas!” Dean shouted. He stared down at his hand, the skin split apart by the new-grown claws, fur spreading fast over the back of it. 

Castiel fixed Dean with a steady stare. He needed to see Dean in those eyes, even if they were warped now. He needed to find acceptance there—he needed to know that he had permission to do something that might tear them both apart. But he couldn't find it. After he'd become so practiced at identifying every minute change in Dean's eyes, every indication of his mood through the way they flashed and moved, this was unbearable. He felt blinded. 

“It's going to hurt,” he warned, even though he'd already made that clear. “Possibly more than anything else you've felt before.” 

“You have awesome bedside manner, you know that?” Dean managed to get out before he grimaced in pain. 

That didn't count as an agreement or even acknowledgment of his warning, but there was no more time. If he didn't act now, it might be too late. Castiel drew in a breath and then placed one hand on Dean's shoulder and the other against his torso, like before. Dean winced in response, but shook his head when Castiel peered into his face, brow creased. 

Castiel sucked in a breath and then closed his eyes as he forced his hand through the flesh and made contact with Dean's soul once more. Screaming filtered through as Dean's ribcage rattled against his forearm, as Dean's skin flashed from the strain of something unnatural invading it, but Castiel couldn't stop. Now that he was this far, he had to do the job, cut out and burn away anything that wasn't part of Dean. 

He found them quickly—those black splotches darkening up something that should only be bright. He had to remove them without excising any of Dean's true self, and the margin for error was so small that he hesitated. One wrong move and Dean would be crippled for life. Not physically, but down to his core. Simply put, he wouldn't be Dean anymore. 

But if Castiel didn't do this, then the result would be the same, and so slowly, painstakingly, he burned the tainted parts that Purgatory had left on Dean's soul away. 

As Castiel worked, the screaming only got louder. His chest tightened in response, in that way he'd learned to hate, but he continued to wipe away every blemish on Dean's soul until there was nothing left. 

He remembered the state Dean's soul had been in when he'd rescued it from Hell. It'd been covered in that plague, that demonic taint, but it'd still been so hopelessly human. Castiel had felt so much as he'd repaired it, all of Dean's pain and guilt hitting him in one mighty blow. Back then, he hadn't completely understood it. He'd been nothing more than a grunt following orders; he'd had no conception of what that soul would do to him, of how it would change him. 

Now, it was an honor to put it right again.

Though that only applied if he was successful. Before he retreated, Castiel did his best to repair Dean physically as well. Even if he reversed the turning process, it wouldn't mean a thing if Dean died by other means. Castiel worked to knit up the disaster that had been rendered on his abdomen. When it was done by means of Dean's soul, rather than outwardly, it seemed to work better. At least, that's what he hoped. 

Once Castiel had done as much as he could, and once the strain of a task that required so much power became too much, he pulled away. The swampy area around him came back into focus, along with the pounding noise of the waterfall. But none of that mattered. Castiel stared at Dean, and saw his blunt teeth and nails, his human eyes, his patched up torso, and the relief crashed on him like a great wave. 

He set a hand on Dean's chest, to make sure his heart was still beating, and then—

Then, his body tilted backward, he hit the ground, and everything went black.

\--- 

“...ever gonna wake up?”

Castiel came to feeling groggy. He blinked a few times and took in the dark, enclosed space around him. He tried to lift his head to try to get his bearings, but it felt heavier than it should have. 

The first thing he saw was the back side of the waterfall, the second the cave walls around him. So there had a grotto hidden behind the waterfall, then? Did that mean Dean had dragged him here after he'd collapsed? 

That voice, of course, was Dean's, although Castiel couldn't comprehend why he would have been talking to an empty cave. He glimpsed the man seated near him, staring off through the cascading curtain that the waterfall created. It gave them the illusion of safety, if nothing else. 

“Cas?” Dean peered over at him once he shifted out of his sleeping position. When he realized Castiel's eyes were open, he straightened up and moved closer. “Cas, are you all right?” 

“Yes,” Castiel mumbled weakly as he attempted to push himself up. Dean immediately reached forward to stop him, and Castiel didn't have the energy to resist. “You were talking, weren't you?” 

“Huh?” Dean looked taken aback for a moment, but that expression quickly smoothed out as he shook his head. “Nah. I mean. Just talking to myself, I guess. You were out for a while.”

“How long?” Castiel hadn't forgotten their two week deadline.

“Hell if I know. Or...” Dean paused for a second and chuckled. “Should it be 'Purgatory if I know,' instead?” He flashed a grin, but the tightness around his eyes showed that he realized it was a stretch.

Castiel stared up at him. Even Uriel had been better with jokes than that. 

Though he hadn't understood the logic behind jokes, or how to make them, until recently. He still didn't have a very good hold on it, although he'd certainly _thought_ he did back in the institute. “Pull my finger” was only one stunt he'd pulled back there. Castiel frowned, because now that he thought back to Dean's expression when he'd told him to do that, he realized it hadn't been the slightest bit funny. 

Castiel shoved the thought away. Instead, he looked Dean over and realized that he had some sort of moss pressed against his abdomen. “You found plant life,” he murmured tiredly. 

“Say what?” Dean glanced down at himself and then nodded. “Oh, yeah. I washed off a little bit, too.” He scrubbed his hand over his face, which definitely wasn't as dirt-smudged anymore. “You can too, once you're, uhh, ready to get vertical again.” 

Castiel wished he could go now, to try and wash every last bit of monster blood off of him, along with all the other grime he'd accumulated since he'd taken those souls into his body, but he knew he wouldn't be able to make it at the moment. And perhaps it would be best to take advantage of a chance where they could talk without feeling too threatened. Now they actually _could_ talk, as Dean was no longer losing control of his own body as it changed on him, or bleeding out slowly but surely. 

“How's the wound?” he asked. Dean's face no longer looked strained by blood loss or pain, but Castiel wanted to be sure. The way he'd healed him, an improvised method of fixing the body through the soul, had been a long shot—and if there was any chance that the infection was still festering there, he needed to know. 

“Better,” Dean said as he let out a breath. He rubbed the side of his neck, as if he didn't quite believe it himself. “A lot better. I'm not growing any more claws or fur or wings or anything like that, either.” The relief on his face mirrored Castiel's own feelings. Dean shook his head, expression baffled. “Man, first vamps turn me, then some crazy Purgatory sickness. My luck, right?”

It did seem like Dean always got the short end of the stick, and it couldn't even be completely blamed on choosing the life of a hunter. Plenty of hunters lived lives that were rather normal when compared to Dean Winchester's. And Sam's, of course, but that went without saying. 

Sam. Castiel hoped that the younger Winchester wasn't doing anything too idiotic, but often that was too much to ask from these two. 

“Unlucky in one way, maybe, but there aren't many people who've dodged that bullet twice,” Castiel pointed out. He propped himself up against the cave wall slightly, if only so that he could converse with Dean more easily. The fuzziness in his head had started to dissipate. 

“Yeah, I know,” Dean replied. He lowered his head slightly and let out a sigh. “I don't get that, either. I mean, it's not just the turning thing. How many times have I come back from the dead now?” 

They had already talked about this, in their own strange way. How this constant resurrection, these second and third and fourth chances, were a curse rather than a blessing. Then again, if Castiel hadn't come to on the side of that lake he would have never had the chance to make things up to Dean. Not that he had done a good job of that so far, but things were better now than they had been.

“Dean, since even before your death, you've been chosen in some way,” he explained. 

“No,” Dean cut in, and while his eyes were lit up with a sudden anger, Castiel didn't mind now that they were green again. “Don't give me that righteous man bullshit. These other people, they get turned and that's it. They don't get some miracle cure that fixes everything at the last minute.” He dragged a hand through his hair and then shook his head. “They don't have some angel pal who can just undo any mistake they make.” 

“Dean—” 

“Cas, just—let me talk, okay?” Dean must have been bottling this all up, and so Castiel fell silent. “What makes me more important than anyone else? Why do I always get off easy? I mean, I kill these poor sons of bitches, and yeah, some of them deserve it. _Most_ of 'em do. But for the ones who don't...” 

“Those who don't deserve it would wish for death,” Castiel argued. “The ones who are good people wouldn't want to continue living if they knew it would be at the expense of others.” Dean had to have met his fair share of monsters who fell into that category, and while those hunts had to be the hardest, that didn't mean that he'd done the wrong thing by killing them. 

“Yeah? Then about how Amy? She sure as hell didn't want to die.” The pained look on Dean's face wasn't a result of the healing wound on his torso. 

Castiel looked at the ground. “Who is she?” He still thought it strange that he knew nothing of a person who seemed to have played such a large role in Dean's life. 

Dean let out a deep sigh, one that ran through his entire body. He must have been expecting this question. 

“Well, besides being a kitsune... she is—well, was part of a hunt Sam and I got caught up in about six months back.” 

Six months. Castiel hadn't had a good idea of the passing time ever since he'd absorbed the damage from Sam's soul, but after a few seconds spent navigating the minefield of his own mind, he understood why he didn't know anything about this Amy. 

Dean must have encountered her after the leviathans had chewed Castiel up and spit him back out. Emmanuel must have been getting to know Daphne around that time. 

It was brief, but Dean stared right at him, a confirmation of what Castiel had already pieced together. 

Thankfully, he broke the silence as well. “Well, it's more like Sam ran off to deal with her, 'cause as it turns out, she'd been part of a hunt we'd done way back when Sam was still just a kid.” Dean clenched his hand into a fist and stared down at. “By the time I caught up with him, he told me he'd already handled it, but he hadn't had it in him to kill her. Guess they had a bond.” 

That was Sam's nature, it seemed, to bond with the things it was his self-appointed job to kill. While compassion could supposedly go a long way, Castiel had never had much luck with it himself, and in Sam's case it only ever seemed to lead to more pain.

Dean crossed his arms over his bare chest. He'd likely stripped in order to let the wounds breathe, along with the moss he'd pressed against them as a salve.

“Cas,” Dean continued, though his voice came out weakly. He paused, tightened his jaw, and made another attempt. “Cas, I promised him that I'd leave it alone. I told him that I trusted him when he kept insisting that Amy wasn't gonna be killing anymore. And then, do you know what I did?” 

“You killed her.” Castiel didn't see much point in stringing this out when he'd been able to gather a lot of the details during that charged argument. 

“Right. But you heard—she had a kid. And I just...” Dean slammed his clenched fist down into the ground and then scraped it back and forth across the uneven rock. 

“Dean,” Castiel cut in. 

Dean violently turned his head away. “Fuck, Cas, I was just... you hadn't even been dead three weeks and Sam was losing his mind and I...” 

“Dean,” Castiel tried again, fighting the urge to reach out for the man once more. “You don't need to explain yourself to me. I'm the last person who would need any justifications.” 

Dean looked back, legitimately puzzled. “What do you mean?” 

Castiel pushed himself up further, wanting to be on a level plain with Dean as they discussed this. “I lied to you, and to Sam. I betrayed your trust.” He didn't know if it was wise to head into this sort of territory when their friendship still felt like it was covered in barbed wire, but it needed to be said.

This didn't apply just to Dean and Sam. There was also his family, those he'd killed when they'd only been trying to help. Rachel, Balthazar—sometimes he swore he could still see their blood on his hands. At the mental institute, he'd sometimes seen the outline of their wings against the walls or the ceiling. 

Dean stayed quiet, so Castiel pressed on. “I could hardly judge you for doing the same, considering the circumstances. You were trying to wrest control back into your hands, isn't that right?” He looked up to find Dean's eyes and then held his gaze as if he never planned to look away. 

Dean, as usual, managed to maintain eye contact for an impressive amount of time, but he almost always looked away first, and this time was no different. “What, trying to read me like a book now?” he asked bitterly. 

Castiel shook his head. “It's not a matter of trying.” If there was one human he knew backwards and forwards, it was Dean Winchester. “I'll remind you that I've had a decent amount of contact with your soul as of late.” 

Dean deadpanned at him for a few seconds. “If I ask what the hell you're getting at, you're just going to give me some creepy response, aren't you?” 

Castiel only shrugged in reply, and Dean quickly waved him off. Either way, that comment had cut through the tension, though it wasn't a subject they could avoid for too long.

“Anyway,” Dean said after a few minutes dragged by, “it's not something I can make up for now.” 

“I put her to rest, as much as such a thing is possible with a monster,” Castiel provided after a pause. At least he had been able to take one of the creatures here down for good, though he obviously couldn't make a habit of it or there wouldn't be much of him left by the end of this. 

If an end was even attainable. They were a sorry sight at the moment, and while they'd found some water clean enough to wash their wounds out with, they couldn't stay here long. Between the days spent in that tree hollow and however much time he'd been passed out here, who knew how much of that two weeks was left? 

There were more monsters with vendettas out there, and they would keep coming after them and tearing into them until nothing was left. If they didn't find reach the top of that mountain relatively soon, they might not last. Dean had taught him to never lose sight of his goal no matter how impossible it seemed, but that was getting harder and harder. 

Castiel realized that Dean had fallen silent and glanced over to see that he'd bowed his head down between his knees. When Dean realized there were eyes on him, he glanced up and sighed. “Yeah, you're right. I made my choice back then, good or bad. Can't change it now.” 

“You should tell Sam,” Castiel urged, “when we get back.” He almost said “if,” but managed to force the right word out at the last second. 

Dean grimaced and leaned back. “Yeah, guess I should. This whole thing with none of us trusting each other hasn't exactly worked out for us.” 

Castiel nodded and wrung his hands together, a nervous action he'd only started after he'd inherited Sam's damage. “Dean, I thought...” 

“Oh, no, you don't,” Dean stopped him. “I know that tone. You heard me before, didn't you? I already forgave you for all that crap.” Dean closed his eyes and shook his head, to push it away as if it was nothing, but Castiel caught a tiredness in the action.

“You can forgive me for almost driving your brother to death and for unleashing a race of immensely powerful creatures on the world that easily?” he shot back, with an accusing hint to his tone. When he'd first noticed that forgiveness in Dean, he'd still been so mentally unsound, and he'd accepted it without question. Now, logic came into play and it just didn't make sense. 

“Believe me, it wasn't easy. I was fucked up enough that I thought that going behind Sam's back and killing someone he cared about was the right thing to do.” 

“What does that have to do with me?” Castiel asked as tilted his head to the side. 

Dean sighed heavily. “You were dead, and the shit you pulled cut way deeper than I wanted to admit, all right? And I wasn't ready to forgive you. But since you were gone, it wasn't like I could deal with it. So I...” 

“Lashed out,” Castiel finished, even as he looked away. For some reason, during his long journey down that dark road to dealing with a demon, he'd never realized that it would hurt Dean so much. He'd kept it from him to keep him safe, and because there had been some sense of shame, but he'd never fully considered the effect it would have on someone who was supposed to be a friend. 

It seemed so obvious now.

While Castiel had gone so far as to call Dean and Sam friends, he hadn't understood the full meaning of the word. He'd wanted to do everything for them and keep them safe, but that didn't mean a thing if it was against their wishes. 

“Nonetheless, I want to say my piece, if you'll let me,” Castiel continued as he searched for Dean's eyes.

“All right, fine, but keep it brief. I can only handle so much of this heart-on-the-sleeve stuff,” Dean replied. 

Grateful for the opportunity, Castiel took a moment to work out what he wanted to say. “I thought that if I took the leviathans down with me, it would fix everything I'd done wrong. I thought it was the only way I could atone. But... that was wrong, and then I completely lost myself. Knowing that you were suffering when I was busy living some new life is...” 

“C'mon, Cas, you're making it sound like I was lost without you or something. It wasn't like that,” Dean said roughly. “I just had a lot of shit to work through. And yeah, you kept me waiting, but at least you found your way back somehow.” 

“No,” Castiel responded, “we're not quite home yet.” He still didn't know where home _was_ , but he had to take this one thing at a time. 

“Ain't that the truth,” Dean grumbled as he rotated his shoulders and cracked his back. “If this is home, then we need to move to greener pastures pronto.” 

If only it were that simple. While Castiel could have offered a long list of all the obstacles they had working against them, all the aspects of their situation that made returning to Earth unlikely, there was no point to it. 

“Anyway,” Dean said, “the real point here is that both of us are still breathing, and as long as that's the case?” He had an almost cocky look on his face. “Then we keep working on getting out of here.” 

“We head for the mountain,” Castiel said.

Dean shook his head. “First you've gotta rest. I know whatever you did to heal me did a number on you.” Dean looked at him more seriously now, his forehead creased with—was it concern? “Thanks for that, by the way.” 

“Don't mention it.” Castiel shook his head, although that movement made him dizzy on its own. However long he'd already been out, it wasn't enough.

“'Don't mention it,' he says. Since when do angels talk like that, huh?” Dean asked jokingly.

“Since they meet humans with an odd way of speaking.” 

“Odd? The way I talk ain't odd, Cas. It's normal.” 

“I don't believe I've met anyone who says 'son of a bitch' as much as you do.” 

Dean laughed, the sound so foreign that it startled him. 

“All right, you might have a point there,” Dean conceded. “Just get to sleep already, all right? I'm feeling a hell of a lot better since you fixed me, so I should be good to stay up.” 

While Castiel's first instinct was to argue that point, this was one case where he actually believed Dean. He had a decent amount of energy, and his mood was also surprisingly good considering their circumstances. It wasn't something Castiel could wrap his head around, but at this point he didn't see much reason to question it.

“You know the protocol by now, I imagine.” 

“Cas, if you keep questioning my competence, I'm gonna start taking it personally,” Dean shot back with a raised brow. “Go to sleep already.” 

It'd been a long time since they'd conversed this way, and the fact that it reminded Castiel of Dean's conversations with Sam, that simple back-and-forth, encouraged him. He focused on that thought as he settled back down and drifted to sleep.

\--- 

Castiel woke not to the sound of Dean's voice or to the shuffling of him moving around in their temporary hiding space. Instead, he simply opened his eyes, suddenly conscious again and feeling far more enlivened. While his body retained damage here and didn't heal the way he was used to, it still had an impressive resilience and a decent recovery rate. That was one thing to be grateful for.

He sat up and rubbed at his eyes, remembering the action from when he'd thought he was just a human with some extraordinary healing powers.

“Dean?” Castiel listened to his voice as it echoed against the cave walls, back to where it became a dead end, but received no response. 

Maybe Dean had gone out to get more makeshift dressings for his wound, or maybe he went scouting for something. Castiel couldn't blame him for leaving, seeing how sitting there watching him sleep must have seemed boring to Dean. While he didn't mind watching Dean while he rested, his attention span wasn't the same as a human's. 

He grabbed for a handhold in the wall and pulled himself to his feet, letting out a relieved sigh when he confirmed he could stand without any dizziness. While Dean might be back soon, there was a chance that something had gone awry, and Castiel wasn't willing to wait and find out if that was the case. Better to go looking for him, and so he ducked under the waterfall and moved back across the swampland. 

He'd been in such a panic when he'd arrived here that he hadn't really taken in the scenery, not that Purgatory had much to offer when it came to nice views. Still, it was vital to know one's surroundings, and so he glanced down at the swamp water, noting first the mulch and scum that made it a sickly green color, and second the smell—which wasn't something he could describe using any terms from Earth. This was distinctly a Purgatory smell, made up of the expulsions of dead souls and the layering of a swamp that hadn't been cleaned by any natural processes since it had come into existence. 

He doubted Dean had cleaned off here, which meant that there had to be some cleaner water nearby. The water that cascaded down from overhead looked clean enough, which meant that he would need to find a way up to the top of the waterfall somehow 

That required more wading through swamp water than Castiel would have liked, but his clothing was such a mixture of blood, dirt, and now algae that it hardly mattered. As he circled around the area, though, and reached the edge of a cliff face, he realized they were already partway up the mountain. In his panic, he had transported them to the best possible place. 

After some more searching, Castiel located a grouping of rocks that he could climb up to an area of raised land. Dean had definitely strayed further than he should have, but they could discuss that later.

The climb was harder on him than expected, but Castiel eventually reached the top and found a pool of crystal clear water. Its dark blue color spoke to just how deep it went. That explained why the grotto was so shallow. Most of this area was likely taken up by this body of water, and it seemed almost like an oasis in comparison to the rest of what he'd seen. 

This had to be where things like mermaids lived, however, and Castiel knew better than to let his guard down. Tempted as he was to wade into the shallow portion of the pool and wash off, he had to find Dean first. 

Once he started walking the length of the lake, it didn't take long before he spotted two figures in the distance, both of them humanoid. Dean he picked out immediately, as he knew his shape and posture better than anyone else's, but the other man was an unknown. 

It made no sense. No other humans existed here, and that thought only alerted Castiel to the fact that something was very wrong. As he sped closer, the stranger's features stood out, but only in the way that there was actually nothing strange about them. Just another human, somewhere around Dean's age, standing there with hands in his pockets. 

Castiel used his angelic senses to expose what hid under that mask of normality—just like he'd done with Ruby, with Meg, with anything that thought it could masquerade as human—and what he saw almost stopped him in place. 

Completely hairless, the creature still stood on two legs. Instead of a mouth, a bloody hole covered by a thin membrane of skin took up the lower half of its face. Hollow, gaping eyes sunk into its skull, and its body was covered in gray skin, like a corpse that had been left underground for too long. 

A siren—and Dean had no idea what he was talking to. How could he have not realized that another human being here made no sense? Castiel broke into a jog, and finally they both noticed him.

“And there's the man of the hour,” the siren said, motioning toward Castiel with a flick of its hand. 

Dean turned to face him, but the look on his face immediately struck Castiel as wrong. Dean's eyes looked cloudy and void of emotion, and now Castiel understood why he had been conversing so casually despite the warning signs. His mind wasn't his own now. How could Castiel have let this happen, when he had just healed Dean's body and soul? 

But even worse than all that was something else he recognized in Dean's expression: resentment toward him. 

“You see it now, don't you?” the siren continued. It stepped toward Castiel with purpose. He tensed in response, yet managed to hold still as the monster laid a hand on his shoulder. For a moment the skin on its hand flashed from peach-colored to gray, but still Dean remained blind to it. “Cupid here just makes things way too _complicated_.” 

“I'm not a Cupid,” Castiel protested. He had to get through to Dean somehow, before the poison's effects worsened. “Whatever it's told you, you can't listen to it, Dean,” he entreated. “You know what this is, so _fight_ it.” Dean had been targeted by a siren before, Castiel knew, so maybe he'd be able to resist it this time. 

But he was too late—Dean remained reserved and suspicious of him. “No,” he shot back. “No, Cas, he's right. I keep giving you chances and letting you in, but that's not gonna do me any good. I should have known that from the start.” 

“Exactly,” the siren said, grinning in a way that made a chill run through Castiel's blood. “It's not like angels are capable of love in the first place.” 

Love? What did love have to do with this? Sirens took the concept and twisted it, of course, but it didn't make sense, here and now. The creatures usually turned men on their wives, or their family, not—

“What are you talking about?” Castiel asked, frowning in confusion as he shrugged away from the monster's grip. 

“How clueless can you be?” The siren laughed, spinning in a slow circle as he shook his head in disbelief. “He's just proving my point now. Dean, he's never going to _understand_.” 

Dean continued to stare at Castiel, his eyes wide open and unblinking as they pinned him down. Castiel was usually the one who gave Dean those looks, and it didn't feel right to be on the receiving end of it now. What did Castiel not understand? The fact that he didn't know, that his uncertainty only proved the siren's point, frustrated him.

Love was never a word he had applied to himself and Dean. Devotion, loyalty, sacrifice—those all fit. Unfortunately, so did betrayal, hurt, and frustration.

“Yeah, and with you...” Dean finally looked away from Castiel, turning a gaze that was almost adoring on the siren. “It's like, we just talk. It's easy.” 

“I'm always here for you,” it agreed, nodding its head and returning to Dean's side. “And _I_ understand you. But if you want it to work out between us, Dean, there's something very important that I need you to do.” 

“Yeah?” Dean returned. He flicked his tongue over his lips in anticipation.

When the siren turned to look at Castiel, he saw eyes that were red, yet dull and lifeless. Only Purgatory could take red, a color that signified things like passion and energy, and deaden it. Spilled blood and wicked stares, that was all that red meant here. 

“You need to take him out. For me,” it said. “Then... then we can be together forever. We'll leave this place, we'll find somewhere that will accept us.” The siren placed the back of its hand to Dean's face, and Dean closed his eyes and let out a sigh as his body relaxed. 

Castiel remembered when they'd hidden in the tree hollow to mend their wounds, when he'd touched Dean's forehead and received a very similar reaction, and something twisted inside him. 

“Dean, please,” he tried, motioning outward with his hand as if he could draw Dean closer to him—though he knew it was futile now. The siren's hold was too strong, and it had managed to look somewhere deep down inside of Dean, find a weakness and exploit it. 

Worst of all was that Castiel barely understood it himself. Dean Winchester was supposed to be the human he knew the most about, so how was it that he was being bested by a monster? Had he and Dean really regressed that far in their friendship? 

And how could he stop this? He didn't have the strength to smite another creature, and a siren's spell was usually unbreakable unless it was killed. Maybe incapacitating it would be enough here, but—

“Don't listen to more of his lies and excuses,” the siren hissed. “You don't need to resort to something like that anymore.” The creature nodded to the wooden stake in Dean's hand. “Dean, I'm waiting.” 

Dean gripped the stake so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He took a few slow, methodical steps toward Castiel. 

This was the last thing Castiel wanted. The anger, the fighting, the hate and the resentment that they'd tossed at each other in word form was supposed to be a thing of the past. He had never seen Dean look at him with this level of loathing, though, like he wanted nothing more than to wipe him from existence. 

There was an intensity to it, too. When Dean glared at him, Castiel felt like that gaze burnt down through him, into a part of him that human eyes shouldn't be able to see. 

Dean lunged at him without warning. 

Castiel made to dart out of the way, but Dean was a trained hunter and managed to grab for his arm, shoving them both down to the ground. They landed hard on the rock, Castiel taking all of Dean's weight as he crashed on top of him. They couldn't afford to fight now, when both of them were weak and injured, but what could he do but defend himself? He had to snap Dean out of this somehow.

“What the hell do you know about other people,” Dean snarled as he tried to maneuver the stake over Castiel's chest. Castiel grabbed for his wrists, relying on his superior strength to hold Dean in place. “What the hell do you know about being a _person_?”

Castiel remembered the doctors in the institute, how they'd thrown diagnosis after diagnosis at them. He'd had a moment of clarity there once, where he managed a glance at the notes one of them had written after a session with him. Something about how he seemed “unable to relate to other people” and was “more interested in inanimate surroundings than in forming any meaningful bonds.” 

That wasn't right, though. He'd been Dean's friend. He'd been Sam's friend. Or had he had it wrong all this time? 

The sensation of the tip of Dean's stake pressing against his neck brought Castiel back to the present, and he shoved Dean off of him in one swift motion. “Your thoughts are not your own right now,” he argued desperately. “Dean, you have to listen to me.” It would be the epitome of a pathetic joke if they ended up killing each other now, after they'd worked this whole time to keep each other safe.

“I'm done with _listening_ to you,” Dean countered, and he made a clumsy attempt to hurl his stake at him. Gone was the skilled hunter, replaced by someone who had been driven into a frenzy by an outside force. When the stake uselessly clattered on the rocks a few feet away, Dean made yet another attempt to pin him, but Castiel grabbed for his shoulders, turning the tables so that Dean was under him instead. 

Castiel needed to get some of Dean's blood onto his blade—the blood of the one under the spell was essential to killing a siren—but he didn't want to injure him badly. A bronze dagger was technically also required to kill one, but he hoped an angelic weapon would trump that. Castiel wasn't versed in how to lightly wound someone, made more difficult by the fact that Dean was fighting back. 

Dean's hands dug into his hips in an attempt to push him off, but there was a charge to his grip that struck Castiel as oddly familiar. He fought to pry Dean's hands off of him, manifested his blade and searched for a place he could lightly cut him. 

Dean tried to shove him back and their bodies slid against each other. Castiel thought about the times when Daphne had approached him—or Emmanuel, rather—with that unmistakable intent, had dragged him up to their room and pushed him down onto the bed. 

It had to be an effect of the venom, of course. This wasn't _Dean_ , and Castiel couldn't get distracted. He pressed his weight down, which caused Dean to groan in a way Castiel wasn't capable of identifying at the moment. He pushed that from his mind and instead fought to grasp Dean's wrist and trap it against the ground. He had to do this quickly, before one of them did something they'd regret. He had to win Dean's mind back, just as he'd restored his body.

“Dean, are you _really_ trying your hardest here?” the siren called from over Castiel's shoulder. “I know fighting an angel is a lot to ask, but I have faith in you... unlike some other people.” 

Reinvigorated, Dean yanked his hand away and stretched out for his stake, ramming it toward Castiel's chest with an impressive amount of strength. Castiel did what he could to shrug away from the blow, and instead the stake's tip stabbed him in the shoulder. He clenched his jaw against the pain, but he wasn't about to lose a fight to a human, even if it was Dean. He flung out with the elbow of his opposite arm and caught Dean in the face. 

That gave him enough time to yank the stake out of his shoulder, toss it aside, and then reach down to clutch at Dean's wrist once more. He slid his blade across Dean's palm to coat it with a passable amount of blood. 

The siren had to have figured out what he was planning by now, which meant that Castiel had to work quickly. Dean hadn't quite given up yet, wanted him dead _that_ badly, as both of his hands snaked up towards Castiel's throat and started to squeeze. 

Technically, angels didn't need to breathe, but when in a human vessel, strangulation could still be disorienting. Castiel tried to wrest Dean's hands off of him (he could feel some of the blood from the cut on Dean's hand smear against his throat), but as soon as he removed one it would simply snap back into place. 

The mind of a soldier was a variable one, however, and so Castiel forced his body to the side until his flank hit the ground, giving him enough room to pull his legs up and kick his feet into Dean's gut. Dean cried out and released him, which allowed Castiel an opening to scramble upward. 

Even while disoriented, it only took him a second to locate the siren. He ran toward it—he needed to make the killing blow before Dean recovered. 

That meant not giving it a chance to fight back. Once Castiel got close enough, he leapt forward and crashed right into its human form. The second its head cracked against the ground, he stabbed his blood-dipped blade into the creature's throat. It writhed unnaturally and screeched in pain. 

That sound—the cry of an injured siren, so loud it hurt even Castiel's ears—might be enough to break the spell. Castiel slid his blade out of the creature's neck and then buried it deep into its shoulder to pin it down. Once he was certain it couldn't go anywhere, he pulled himself off of it and ran back to Dean.

Dean was still on the ground, in a daze. He shook his head feverishly, as if to clear the rest of the venom out of his mind. His hand was pressed to his stomach where Castiel had kicked him.

“Dean?” Castiel called out. “Dean, are you—”

“Cas!” Dean gasped as he blinked up at him. 

It had worked. Castiel heaved out a relieved breath.

“Come on,” he said quickly, grabbing for Dean's hand to pull him to his feet. He barely chanced a glance back at the siren before they ran across the rocks, away from the waterfall and further into the unknown. Chances were that the monster had only been wounded, not killed, which meant that they needed to put as much distance between them and it as possible. He wasn't in a state to fly at the moment, so flat-out running was the only other option. 

Castiel wasn't exactly used to that kind of exertion, though, and his head still felt fuzzy from the asphyxiation and his shoulder wound. Dean didn't seem to be doing that well either, which was to be expected for anyone who was coming to after being under the influence of something. Somewhere along the way, though, Dean jerked his arm out of Castiel's grip. 

For some reason, Castiel couldn't help wondering if that meant something. Still, if he started second-guessing things, that would be the same as letting the siren win. And so he focused on running even as he stumbled over his own feet, his gaze settled on the higher mountain paths they needed to scale.

\--- 

At first, they kept silent as they traveled, not wanting to make too much noise in case the siren was on their trail. They only spoke up to point out the easiest path to take as they climbed the mountain road.

Once they had put enough distance between themselves and that pool of water, though, Castiel looked to Dean. “Are you all right?” 

“I'm fine,” Dean mumbled. 

“It's normal to feel disoriented after—”

“I know,” he snapped. “Why the hell are you asking me? I'm the one who stabbed _you_.”

Castiel looked to his shoulder, which throbbed with pain. His skin was sticky from the blood, but he'd been able to ignore it in light of the greater concern of escape. “The stake didn't stab that deeply. I'll be fine.” 

“Then we'll both be fine,” Dean said bitterly as he picked up his pace.

As Castiel followed, he could still see the guilt and unrest in Dean's eyes. The way a siren twisted a person's mind was completely fabricated, so it wouldn't be fair for him to blame Dean, nor should Dean blame himself. On the other hand, a siren had to pull from existing feelings to make the venom work properly, and that was where it became more muddled. Did Dean truly think of him as a nuisance? 

A few glances in Dean's direction didn't enlighten Castiel in any way. Dean only stared straight forward, focused on getting somewhere safe so that they could regroup. But Castiel imagined that both of them were dreading that moment when there wasn't any excuse to not talk. 

The further they climbed, the thinner and colder the air got, and Castiel noticed bits of snow coating the ground. It seemed that Purgatory embodied the least pleasant climates and settings. Dark, confusing forests; winding tunnels under the earth; a swampland that smelled truly unholy. And now, a frigid mountain range. At least it helped to numb the pain in his shoulder from that stab wound. 

“We should try to find some kind of shelter before we climb any higher,” Dean said, pausing for a moment to catch his breath. The thin air had to affect him more than it did Castiel. “It's just gonna get colder and harder to breathe. There's a reason that Sam and I hate hunting in conditions like these.” 

And they weren't hunting here, but being hunted, which made it that much worse. Castiel nodded and they worked their way around the mountain as opposed to climbing further up. 

Unfortunately, the snow wasn't fresh, but tinged brown with dirt. Nothing could be easy here, and getting water out of the snow wasn't an option. 

When they found a cave opening and headed inside, pitch black darkness greeted them. On top of that, there wasn't a large difference in temperature from the outside. This level of cold was somehow more bitter, more cutting, than anything Castiel had encountered on Earth. For one, he actually felt it.

“I'm getting sick of caves,” Dean groused as he reached for the cave wall and used it to help him move forward without tripping. “You know what? I'd be pretty fucking happy if I never saw a cave again.” 

That was a point Castiel could agree with. 

Once they traversed far enough into the interior of the mountain, Castiel noticed an area where the ground was fairly smooth and suggested they make camp. With no protests, Dean eased himself onto the ground, still struggling with both the numbing cold and his stomach, likely sore from when Castiel had kicked him. 

Castiel, meanwhile, was bleeding from the shoulder, and so he shrugged his trenchcoat off and bunched it up to press it against the wound. 

So much for not getting it bloody. Maybe it was allowed, if it was his blood. Or did that make it worse?

Dean, of course, noticed. “Sorry,” he said, voice bordering on soft. 

“It's—”

“Yeah, I know, wasn't my fault, I wasn't me, blah blah blah. Glad you're up on your lore, though. We might've been screwed otherwise.” 

Castiel's mouth pulled into a smirk. Maybe it wasn't the right time, but Dean probably couldn't see it in this darkness anyway. “Don't worry. You wouldn't have been able to kill me no matter how hard you tried.” 

“Well, that's encouraging,” Dean grumbled with a roll of his eyes. “You need help wrapping it up or anything?”

In reality, Castiel didn't know much about bandaging a wound, but for some reason he still shook his head. “I can handle it.”

“'Course you can,” Dean murmured. “Then I guess I'll see if I can get a fire started.” He walked forward on his knees and gathered together a rock and some other debris off the cave floor. 

Castiel watched him work and wondered if they were going to address what the siren had done. Castiel knew that he should just brush it off, that letting it bother him only gave that siren exactly what it wanted. 

Something distracted him. When it was so close to silent like this, when he shoved the sounds of Dean's breathing and rock striking against rock to the back of his mind, he could hear something else. Something low in tone, but consistent and enveloping. 

“So,” Dean cut in as he fought with the rock in his hand, wiping at his forehead as he continued to work, “about what happened back there...”

Castiel looked back, his shoulders suddenly tense. 

“I shouldn't have wandered off so far,” Dean finished. “Sorry.” 

Somehow, that was a letdown. Castiel knew that logically, Dean's reckless behavior should have been his largest concern, but—

“That's not what's bothering me right now,” Castiel said. 

Dean stayed quiet, but let out a frustrated grunt when a spark flashed and died just as quickly. “You just said it yourself. That wasn't me.” 

“But Dean—” 

“It wasn't,” Dean said as he tried again. Then, his face lit up with a dim glow as the fire started. He quickly started to add more bits of wood and dead grass to it, making sure to build it steadily. “You think I'd try to kill you, Cas?” 

“No,” Castiel admitted, “I don't. But I know, Dean, that sometimes it must be hard to be friends with me.” 

“What do you mean?” Dean asked, his face cast with dark shadows from the fire as he frowned in concentration.

Castiel looked away for a moment and picked up a stray rock, moving it around in his hand. While most of it was smooth, shaped by years and years of erosion, he felt a rough edge here or there against his palm. “I'm not very good at reading conversations. I say the wrong things at the wrong times. I don't understand most of your jokes, and when I do, I don't know how to respond. I don't recognize any of the songs you play in your car, and I don't particularly like riding in it.” His hand tightened around the rock.

Dean straightened and leaned toward him. “Cas, you think I care about shit like that?” 

“I think you might be better off with someone who doesn't make things so complicated, who doesn't act like he knows everything when he really knows so very little.” Struck by a wave of anger that he couldn't explain, Castiel pitched the rock away and watched it skid across the cave floor. “Dean, it's because of me that we're here in the first place.” 

“No, Cas,” Dean said, raising his voice, which caused Castiel to look back over at him. “It's because of some black-blooded sons of bitches and that asshole Dick that we're here.”

“That's what we both tell ourselves.” Castiel stared down at his balled fists and shook his head. “But they're up there because of me, and I still haven't made that up to you.”

Dean heaved out a tired sigh. “Yeah, Cas, yeah you did, when you helped Sam. And when you went with me to take Dick down. Why the hell are we going over this again?”

Because Castiel couldn't shake the feeling that something still wasn't resolved between them. The way he'd touched Dean's forehead, and Dean's reaction. The anguish that rang through Dean's voice—and his own—each time the other was in danger. The sound Dean had made while under the siren's influence, when Castiel's body—borrowed though it might be—had pressed against his. Each look exchanged, each sacrifice made, the very fact that he knew Dean's soul backwards and forwards, knew his guilt and self-loathing and still found it impossible to fathom. It had to all mean something. But how could he explain that to Dean when he barely understood it himself?

“The siren,” Castiel started again. 

“Forget the fucking siren,” Dean snapped. 

“It said I wasn't capable of love. Do you think that's true?” He lifted his head and looked Dean in the eye. 

Dean's face was bright from the flickering flames, but he stared down at them like they illuminated nothing at all. “How—” He cut off and grit his teeth. “How the hell should I know?” 

Castiel's chest tightened, and he felt something fade and crumble away. “I... I suppose you shouldn't.” 

Dean fell silent, but Castiel was too anxious—his heart pounded oddly in his chest—to try and find his gaze. For a time, he heard only the crackling of the fire and that faraway, rumbling sound. 

When he sensed an additional light source, though, something coming from over Dean's shoulder, he had to look up. Castiel shifted to the side and his eyes widened when he realized what the cause was.

“Dean,” he said urgently. “Behind you.” 

Expecting a threat, Dean shifted around instantly to find the slowly forming letters of another message from Sam. 

Castiel watched from a further distance as the tension left Dean's shoulders. “Hey,” Dean said, relieved. “Look who it is.” 

Castiel, eager to see the time limit, shifted forward slightly. It brought him closer to the fire, and the heat of it brought back a memory—of being caught in a circle of it, of Dean's betrayed glare...

“Three days,” Dean said once the message had finished, causing Castiel to refocus. “Shit. I mean, I guess it could be worse.” 

Castiel swallowed and nodded. “We're approaching the top of the mountain. If we don't encounter any more obstacles, we could probably make it in a day's time.” 

Dean stared back at him. “Did you just hear your own words, man? All we've run into here is obstacles.”

“Then would you rather we leave now and face those obstacles while exhausted?” Castiel argued.

Dean shook his head. “No. I don't think I could take another step without falling over.” He sighed and dragged his hand down the opposite arm. “Fuck, it's cold in here.” 

“I could move closer to you,” Castiel suggested. “The combination of my vessel's body heat and the fire should help to warm you.” 

Dean paused and looked over at him, raising an eyebrow. There was a split second of hesitation before he shook his head. “I'm not _that_ cold.” 

Castiel didn't quite understand. Did the personal space rule apply even in these conditions? “Are you certain?” 

“Yeah, Cas. I can deal.” 

Castiel gave up, though he wished Dean had agreed, as the cold was getting to him too. He pulled his knees up close against his chest and then stared at the fire, as if watching it would somehow make it warmer. He focused on that unknown sound in the distance, which hadn't grown any louder or quieter since they'd settled here. He tried to distract himself. 

But still, he shivered. The way his body shook in place without his permission was a new sensation, and he wasn't fond of it. 

Dean glanced over a few times as he made futile attempts to build the fire. He'd run out of nearby branches to use. 

Finally, Castiel gave up on toughing it out and unwrapped his trenchcoat from his arm to pull around his shoulders. 

“Dammit,” Dean mumbled from across the fire. “All right, fine. It's fucking stupid for us to both sit here freezing our asses off.” He motioned Castiel toward him with a flick of his hand. “Come here.” 

Castiel paused for a moment, but it really would be foolish for both of them to suffer when a better option existed. He pulled himself to his feet, favoring his good arm, and then circled around the fire to sit next to Dean. 

“Who's taking first watch?” Castiel asked tentatively, because it always led to some sort of argument.

“You're the one with the stab wound,” Dean pointed out immediately. 

“I slept for a long while before I encountered you and the siren,” Castiel rebutted. “If you sleep, it should dispel whatever disorientation is still left from the venom.” 

“Dude, I told you I was fine.” 

“Nonetheless, I was the one who rested last.” 

That seemed to be a convincing enough argument, because at that point Dean did what he could to get comfortable. Of course, that was a difficult task when they were half-frozen in a cave that had nothing in terms of soft surfaces, and Castiel had to wait idly by while Dean did a lot of twisting around. 

When Dean shifted for the sixth time, Castiel got sick of it and reached out for Dean's arm, pulling him close enough that he could lean against him.

“You serious?” Dean asked. 

“Don't complain,” Castiel shot back. As far as he was concerned, this wasn't up for discussion. 

With a nod, Dean curled one hand in against his stomach, where his wound from the vampire seemed to finally be healing up. He closed his eyes, and while his body was mostly leaned against Castiel's now, he remained stubborn about keeping his head up. That didn't last long once he actually fell asleep, as his head lolled down to rest against Castiel's neck. 

Despite all the words they hadn't said earlier, this seemed like a step in the right direction. Until now, they'd slept on opposite sides of whatever camp they made, walls built up even if they hadn't acknowledged them. Now they sat close, and Castiel realized that he preferred it this way. It meant he could keep Dean safe. Gradually, he curled his hand up to run through Dean's hair. 

It didn't wake Dean up, which Castiel was grateful for. Because this, he knew, violated personal space.

\--- 

As usual, Castiel worked to keep time while Dean slept (three days, that was all they had), but it was during these quiet moments when his mind would run away from him again. He studied the shadows playing on the cave wall, cast by the fire, and he saw things like demons and angels clashing. He thought of his siblings and realized that he had no idea where most of them were, or if they were alive or dead.

He thought about the two of them here, two living things caught in a world plagued with death, and he had no idea if escape was even possible. Dean kept speaking about “when we get out,” and while Castiel knew in many ways he was lying to himself, it was harder for him to mimic that sort of behavior. 

He would get Dean out, at least. If he had to remain behind, then so be it. He knew Dean wouldn't like it, but Castiel had to redeem himself somehow, and this was the best way he could come up with. 

As the fire died down, Castiel realized that it felt like the cave itself was breathing. The rumbling sound from before had been punctuated by a slight shifting of the ground beneath them, and despite the fire being gone, it felt strangely warm. 

“Dean,” he said urgently. He wished that he could let him sleep longer—it had likely only been a few hours—he knew better than to ignore his instincts. 

When Dean didn't stir, Castiel shifted his shoulder slightly to disrupt the place where Dean's head rested. That did the trick, waking Dean suddenly as he sucked in a breath. “What?” he mumbled groggily. “What is it?” 

“I don't think we're alone.” 

“Huh?” Dean snapped up into a crouch, wide awake now as he searched around for any sign of a foe. “What do you mean?”

“Be quiet,” Castiel ordered, “and listen.” 

Dean frowned, but eventually stilled his breathing and closed his eyes. It took him a few moments, but he worked it out. “What the hell is that sound?” 

“Note the temperature as well.” Castiel chanced a glance further into the belly of the cave, far past where they'd journeyed, and saw instead of pitch blackness, a slowly growing light. 

“Get up,” Dean said, his tone urgent as he grabbed for Castiel's arm and hauled him to his feet. “I don't know what that is, but it ain't good.” 

“I have an idea,” Castiel said grimly. 

“Okay, mind sharing with the class then?!” Dean barked. 

“I believe you've dealt with one before, although in a much more—” 

“ _Cas_ ,” Dean practically yelled as he yanked him toward the cave's entrance, breaking into a full-blown sprint. “Now ain't the time for drawn-out explanations!” 

A roar sounded behind them and shook the whole cave hard enough that they both fell off-balance. Castiel hit the ground hard, but managed to land with the parts of his body that weren't already injured. His hand went to the stab wound in his shoulder, but before he knew it Dean had hiked him up to his feet again. 

“C'mon!” Dean yelled. 

They ran, which Castiel still wasn't used to (though their time in Purgatory was getting him more accustomed to it), and he yelled over the pounding of their footsteps—and of much larger ones racing after them. “If you haven't worked it out by now, it's a dragon!” 

“Thanks, professor!” Dean called back, but at that point the time for exchanging words had passed. A very noticeable heat licked at their backs, and they needed to run faster.

As much as Castiel felt that he couldn't keep pace with Dean, who verged on pulling his arm out of the socket as he tried to force him to run faster, he noticed that Dean's hand never left his arm. He didn't know why it stood out to him, especially now, but that tight grip on his bicep spurred him to push his vessel harder.

Finally, the cave's opening showed itself—a relief, when the flapping of wings not his own echoed so loud that it almost drowned out everything else. 

They burst out of the cave and Dean instantly jerked Castiel to the side, throwing both of them to the ground again as the dragon erupted through the cave's mouth right behind them, taking chunks of rock off of cave's mouth as it went. 

Castiel got an full-on look at it—its slender, long body, covered in metallic scales that shone with the light of its self-generated flame. It sent another burst of it out as it took flight, setting even the snowy ground alight. It made a few circling movements in the sky, almost as if it was searching for them, before it took off across the dark sky to another part of the wasteland. 

“You know,” Dean said as he caught his breath, “if it wasn't for the fact that I almost got roasted to a crisp, I'd say that's one of the coolest things I've ever seen.” 

Castiel wasn't quite as impressed by it, but he was also a holy being who could perceive things that a human could barely dream of. Not wanting to dampen one of the only moments Dean in which had expressed awe during their miserable time here, he didn't comment on it, instead pressing against a rock to get to his feet again. “Let's be glad it didn't seem interested in us once it chased us out of its territory.” 

“Tell me about,” Dean said as he stood with him, one hand on his chest as if to check that his heart was still beating. “We picked the wrong cave to hide out in.” 

“My guess is that there isn't a right one,” Castiel replied. He tilted his head up to the mountain peak, which seemed both close and impossibly far. “We need to reach the top of this mountain before the fire does.”

He didn't know if the fire would move that far, but the flames somehow latched onto even the dead earth, scorching through it and growing larger and more consuming with each second. Dean started to cough from the smoke and Castiel took a moment to chart out a path for them, trying to find a safe route up. 

They had to stay close, so Castiel grabbed for Dean's wrist and led them forward. These small touches, born out of necessity, had been frequent here. But it didn't mean anything. The wrist, the shoulder, pulling each other along, it was an act of friendship and nothing more. If that's what Dean believed, then Castiel would have to take it as true. 

They maneuvered carefully through the flames, a difficult task when both of them had injuries and couldn't move with as much swiftness or flexibility. Castiel knew that a burn wound required even more resources than a bad gash, which meant it was imperative neither of them took a wrong step. He felt the fire against his skin, so hot that he—what should have been impossibly—started to sweat, and knew that it had to be twice as bad for Dean, who hadn't said a word since they'd started navigating the fiery labyrinth. 

With only their legs to carry them, outrunning fire was no easy task, and it closed in rapidly. Before he knew it, Castiel couldn't find a clear way through. He and Dean stood back to back and watched as the flames moved in closer to them with each passing second. 

“Well, that's fantastic,” Dean said between a series of harsh coughs. “We might just need to throw our coats over our heads and run through, Cas. I—”

Before they could discuss the merit of such an idea, though, something appeared out of the flames and literally leapt through to stand before them. The light cast by the fire showed them an impressive wolf creature. Clearly battle-weary from the scars and the thinness of its brown fur, it was strongly built and a threat nonetheless. 

Its voice boomed out from everywhere and nowhere at once, over the sound of the flames. _Jump on_ , it said, and once again Castiel got the sense that the voice was female. _I can get you out of here!_

It was going to save them? Castiel glanced to Dean, wondering if somehow he knew who this was. A random monster wouldn't have decided to take mercy on them. Mercy didn't exist here, so this had to be someone Dean knew. Dean only shrugged at him. Either way, they were in no position to resist help, even from an unknown source. 

They moved forward as a pair and the wolf bent down, its tail whipping around to keep the fire at bay. Once it lowered, they were able to clumsily climb onto its back. As soon as both of them sat securely atop it, Castiel behind Dean, the wolf took off, dashing so quickly that he felt the wind whip through his hair. 

“Head for the mountain top!” Castiel called out as he clutched hard at the wolf's fur. 

He received no response, but the wolf quickly cleared the fire as it headed straight up. It was different from flying—a more tangible sort of movement, but more exposed than something like riding in a car. Castiel leaned forward to ensure that he didn't fall off, and had to press against Dean's back as a result. Dean didn't react in any noticeable way, which was fine. Between reconciled friends, it meant nothing. A moment where personal space _had_ to be breached, and that was all. 

They flew up, and up, and Castiel felt that three day time limit (shorter, after those hours Dean had slept) become less of a burden. Thanks to this sudden offer of help, a small beacon of light in a land that had offered them nothing but hardships, escape finally felt attainable. 

The wolf jumped from rock to rock as the slope of the mountain leveled out near the peak, and then pressed forward until they reached a forested area, still spattered with snow. Finally, the beast halted in an open clearing, circled by trees draped in white. It pressed itself to the ground again to let them down. 

Dean jumped off first and Castiel followed. When he landed, it jostled his injured shoulder, but he bit back against the pain. 

Immediately, Dean spun around to stare the monster down. The fact that he managed to glare at it like it was just another human was remarkable. “All right, helping us out is all well and good, but you better start explaining.” Because Dean knew as well as Castiel did that these things didn't come without some sort of catch. For all they knew, the wolf had brought them here to have a calm, solitary place to devour them. 

The wolf looked back at Dean, its red eyes flicking back and forth between them but remaining primarily on him. 

_I guess it's no surprise that you don't know who I am,_ it said. 

What Castiel struck about this creature was that despite the ethereal quality of the voice, he heard something undeniably human in it. That fox creature—Amy, as it has once been called—had been much the same, although all of her qualities had been the unseemly parts of a human, anger and bitterness from betrayal wrapped up in a wounded soul. 

This one's soul, on the other hand, evoked crushing despair and loneliness that resonated far too easily with him. Castiel closed his eyes for a moment, tempted to pull away from the situation. He knew there was nowhere to go, and held his ground. 

Dean really stared at the beast now, taking a few steps to the left or the right as if that would help explain anything. “Fuck,” he said after a long pause. “You're a werewolf.”

Castiel glanced over. That much should have been obvious, although he realized he couldn't blame Dean so much for being slow with it when they'd just outrun a dragon. 

“... Madison?” Dean guessed, wincing slightly as he bowed his head.

_That's right._ The wolf turned it head away. _I didn't think we'd ever meet again, and honestly, I wish we hadn't._

The name sounded familiar to Castiel, but while he was aware of a large number of the hunts Dean and Sam had gone on before his contact with them, he didn't know every detail. He stood by carefully, waiting to see how this would all turn out. 

“Holy shit, me neither,” Dean replied, shell-shocked. “ _Madison_ , you've... I don't even know what to say.” His expression pinched in that way it did when he was dealing with something particularly difficult, and Castiel could tell by how the two spoke to each other that the history between them went beyond one hunting and killing the other. He sensed not just aggression, but regret. 

_I heard you news about you guys when you first got here,_ it explained, as it shifted around nose sniffing at the air constantly. Likely on the ready for any sign of danger. _It took me a while to track you down, obviously. How did you even end up here?_ It turned toward Dean again, and the question was clearly meant for him.

“It's a long story,” Dean said with a shake of his head. “Madison, you should have stayed the hell away from us. I figure every clawed thing in this place wants a piece of me right now, and you're just gonna get caught up in it.”

The wolf tossed its head, like a horse when it was annoyed, and turned back toward him. _I've been here for years, Dean. I know the rules far better than you do. Which is why I brought you this far._

At that point, Castiel could no longer stand to the side and let them have their reunion. He stepped forward, lifting his head to make eye contact despite the piercing red that stared back. That shade was hard for him to endure after seeing it in Dean's eyes, but he couldn't shy away from it now. “Then I was right? The peak is where the door is opened?” 

_Castiel, right? Most of the news about you down here isn't good, but if Dean's working with you, then..._

Dean stepped forward. “You know whatever crap these assholes are spewing, it's bogus. Cas is a friend.” 

Castiel looked to Dean, shocked by how easily he could say such a thing. As if nothing he'd done—his stint as God, releasing the leviathans—as if it didn't even _matter_. Dean had already admitted to forgiving him, but it still didn't feel real. Castiel felt oddly short of breath, and his stomach twisted in a way that bordered on unpleasant. 

Madison looked between them and nodded. _Yeah, that's definitely the spot. Each time someone comes or goes, it makes a pretty big bang._

Dean grinned. “Madison... thanks.” He stepped forward, his hand twitching as he lifted it slowly. 

The wolf shook its head. _Please, no petting. That would just be too weird._

“I already rode on your back,” Dean pointed out with a shrug, but pulled his hand back. “I just want you to know that we owe you for this. A lot.” 

_You don't deserve to be down here, Dean._ Castiel took note of how he wasn't included in that statement, but felt no need to argue against it.

“Anything we can do for you?” Dean offered. “I mean, whatever you want—” 

Leave it to Dean to act as if he was in charge when he was the human, barely armed and wounded, and Madison was the creature that had suffered the indignities of this place for what must have felt like ages. But humans had that tendency, to make themselves out to be so much bigger than they were. 

Castiel exchanged a look with the wolf, and there was a moment of understanding between them. He smiled slightly, without even meaning to. 

_Nothing like that,_ she said, shaking her head. _I just want to know one thing._

Apparently, she didn't even have to ask. Dean knew. Castiel could tell from the look on his face. 

“About Sammy,” he said quietly. 

She nodded, and the missing piece of the puzzle came together. Once again, it all revolved around Sam Winchester. 

“He's, uh...” Dean paused and ran his tongue over his lips in that way he did when he was nervous. “He's doing as well as he can, considering all the shit we have to go through.” 

It was a way to dance around the details, around the fact that Castiel had done some terrible damage to Sam Winchester, and while it had been fixed, some scars could never be removed. But he knew better than to say anything right now. Telling someone who was trying to help them, and who apparently had some level of affection for Sam, about what he had done would not be a strategic move. 

_I can never trust the things I hear around here, so it's good to hear it from you,_ she said, visibly relaxing as she cease her pacing and regarded them both. _Can you tell him that I still think of him sometimes? And that I don't blame him?_

Dean frowned. “Madison...” 

“You've done an admirable job of holding yourself together here,” Castiel said suddenly, because he felt it was something she might need to hear. And because out of all the things they'd dealt with here, she felt the most human. “So many of the souls here are ravaged, torn apart and tainted, but you...” 

“You still seem like you,” Dean confirmed. “It's gotta be harder that way, but keep it up, all right?” 

The wolf huffed, almost in embarrassment, and Castiel wondered if he truly saw that or if he was imprinting human mannerisms onto something that was very much not. Still, she had once been human, and at her core she remained so. 

_On the other end of this forest, there's a lake. At the middle of it is an island, and that's where the ritual has to be performed. Here's the catch, though._

“There's always a catch.” Dean said the words at the same time that Castiel thought them.

_I haven't been that way in a while because that lake used to be where a lot of the leviathans spent their time. Things may have changed after they went Earthside, but you'd better watch your backs._

The leviathans, of course. They had been noticeably absent during their time here, most likely because many of them were still on Earth, either hiding from Crowley or trying to regroup. The one who had posed as Dick Roman hadn't shown himself here either, which meant he was truly dead or he had decided to cut his losses. But right now, Castiel knew that he and Dean didn't pose much of a threat. If they were going to be targeted, it would be as they crossed that lake. 

“Great. Well, at least we know what to expect,” Dean said after a pause. 

“Is that everything we need to know?” Castiel asked. 

Madison tilted her head from side to side, thinking it over, and Castiel was again bowled over by how human it seemed. _You know how to perform the blood ritual, I'm guessing._

“We've got that part covered, yeah,” Dean said. 

More or less, Castiel thought to himself. The blood of a being from outside Purgatory, and the blood of the corrupted. The sigils ran through his head—of course, he remembered them in painful detail...

In the original ritual, the virgin was a sacrifice. If that still applied, then he knew exactly what he had to do.

“All right, Madison, you better get the hell out of here before something finds us.” Dean's voice caused Castiel to snap back into the present. 

_You don't have to tell me twice._ The wolf straightened up and Castiel watched as the muscles in her four legs tightened, ready to go on the run once more. He got the sense that Madison spent a lot of her time here running, and tried not to think too hard on what years and years of running scared would do to a person. Or a werewolf. 

Without asking, Dean moved forward and reached his hand out to drag down the side of her neck. “Sorry,” he said with a rueful smile. “Had to.” 

_I'll forgive you this one time._ She backed up then, disturbing the ground with her massive feet as she glanced over her shoulder, ears twitching this way and that in response to their surroundings. _Dean, take care of Sam. That's all I ask._

And with that, she was gone, darting away so fast that it was impossible to know which direction she had gone. 

Dean spun in a slow circle, as if he could figure it out and watch her go, but eventually he just turned to Castiel. “I'll tell you all about her, after this.” 

“Of course,” Castiel said with a nod. If Dean needed to get something off his chest, then he'd listen. “For now, we should get moving.” 

“Hell yeah,” Dean replied. “We're finally gonna get out of this place.” 

He made it sound easy, like swimming across that lake would be no obstacle, but Castiel decided to allow it. Before, he would have pointed it out and made it clear just how terrible their odds were, but now he realized that even if it was true, it didn't need to be said. 

They headed off across the forest, and as they walked Castiel wondered how far they had traveled altogether since arriving here, if distance was even something that could be measured in this place. Purgatory was surprisingly tangible, most likely because that way pain and discomfort could be felt to their fullest. 

“Is it just me, or could you hear a pin drop here?” Dean asked. 

Castiel knew that an absence of sound wasn't necessarily a good thing. It could mean they were alone, or it could mean that the things watching them had fallen into a deadly silence. If he concentrated, it still felt as if there were creatures creeping at the edge of his mind. He heard nothing, but he felt it, in his skin and through the bottoms of his feet. Maybe that was just the last remnants of his insanity rearing its head. 

They kept walking, and he made a habit of looking over his shoulders. Each shadow left by the trees looked like it might be some sort of threat. Eventually, he shook off his paranoia and focused on the path ahead of them. 

But when Castiel suddenly felt hands clamp around his mouth and pull him back, into the trees and then somewhere too dark for him to see, he thrashed and struggled and kicked himself for ever assuming that a bad feeling was a creation of his mind.

\--- 

Castiel's eyes snapped open. He sucked in a breath and instinctively thrashed in place, to escape whatever might have grabbed him.

Instead, he tumbled off of a bed and onto a wooden floor. 

Which, given where he'd been and what he'd been doing, didn't—couldn't—make sense. He pushed himself up to his feet and searched the room. It was simple, with a double bed, a closet, a table and a chair that had a familiar jacket draped over it. Dean's jacket. 

“What is this?” he asked no one, startled by the sound of his own voice in the quiet space. Castiel stared down at himself. On top of all his wounds being gone, he saw that he was wearing pajamas—a white shirt and checkered pants, similar to what he'd worn as Emmanuel. But this wasn't the house he'd shared with Daphne.

Then where was it? He took in the discolored ceilings and the walls with their peeling paint, but it was a certain smell—of baked beans and motor oil—that confirmed where he was: Bobby Singer's house. 

Or so his perceptions told him. Bobby's house had burnt to the ground, and he was supposed to be in Purgatory, so none of this could be real.

Angels couldn't dream, so he couldn't be under the effect of any dream root. Which meant it was some other kind of mind game. He'd have to explore further to figure out what exactly could be behind this, but regardless, he needed to snap himself out of it as soon as possible. Dean was still in that forest, probably trying to get him to come to. Or what if he'd been grabbed by the same thing, or something worse? 

Behind the door Castiel heard the sound of a jingling bell and then a scratching noise. Survival mode kicked in and he immediately came up with all the different threats that scratch could embody. A hellhound, a black dog, a werewolf—the possibilities were endless.

He moved to the door to carefully pull it open, and then... 

A black cat pranced in, the bell around its collar tinkling as it walked between his ankles and rubbed against him in greeting. 

He'd told the Winchesters once that he wanted a cat. Was that what this was about? Something that took his thoughts at random and created an illusion based on them? 

He had to get to the bottom of this and see if there was a puzzle to be solved, a way that he could break out of this from the inside. He couldn't expect Dean to be able to save him—for all he knew, Dean was in just as much danger. 

Castiel quickly exited the room, with the cat striving to keep up with him. He cautiously headed down the steps, but any attempts to be surreptitious were ruined by the creaky floorboards. He heard a clattering in the kitchen and realized he wasn't alone. 

As he reached the bottom of the stairs and rounded the corner, ready to fight something off, he saw—

Bobby Singer, with his grayed hair, and his hat that he never seemed to take off, and his long-suffering expression.

“Bobby,” Castiel said. Of course he was here. This was his house, but neither he nor it were supposed to be intact. If Castiel didn't know better, he might have assumed he was in Bobby's version of Heaven. 

He turned away from where he'd been cooking up some concoction in a pot, and Castiel fought to keep his expression unchanged. Some made up version of Bobby wasn't likely to notice any odd stares, but Castiel still felt he should be careful, in case the pleasant nature of this not-dream suddenly turned into something else. 

“I thought you were gonna sleep all day,” Bobby said. “It's lunchtime already.”

Bobby spoke to him as if nothing was wrong. What a farce. As if Castiel ever saw Bobby when there wasn't some sort of emergency. This created version of him only struck Castiel as a dishonor to the man himself. 

But that remark brought up another question. Why was Bobby acting as if it was normal for Castiel to be here, after everything?

“If you're looking for him,” Bobby continued, “he's out with Sam and Jo and one of the junkers.”

On top of Bobby being alive, Jo was too? That implied that Ellen was as well. In other words, all of those mistakes had been undone. It was all so perfect and pleasant that it was too good to be true, and that thought finally made it all click for Castiel. This was the creation of a djinn. 

With those three confirmed alive so far, Castiel had to wonder—how far back did this go, and how did all of it fit together? Not that a djinn had to construct a world that made complete sense, he knew. It had to be desirable, and that was all. 

Castiel forced himself to stop thinking about it. This world didn't matter to him. It wasn't his in the first place, and he needed to get out. 

“He?” he asked. “You mean—”

Bobby rolled his eyes. “Don't play dumb.” 

Castiel headed for the door. If Dean was here, was it the actual Dean, or one the djinn had created? He needed to know.

The cat continued to follow him. That likely meant that he was its owner, though he really had little idea of how to take care of a feline. He didn't imagine it would be hard, but these were the things he'd never had the chance to learn, and probably never would. 

As he stepped outside, Castiel turned around and took in Bobby's house, intact even if it was in as much disrepair as he remembered. Once again, instead of filling him with relief, it felt more like a smack to the face, because Bobby and this place would never exist again in reality. 

No matter how appealing all of this might seem on the surface, it didn't mean a thing. 

Castiel heard the sound of laughter and recognized it as Jo's. He turned around to see her smacking at Sam with the dirty rag in her hand. 

Instead of focusing on the presence of yet someone else who was supposed to be dead, Castiel remained fixated on how Bobby had said that Dean was supposed to be with Jo and Sam. He quickly started for the pair and looked around for any sign of him. 

Sam raised an eyebrow at him in greeting and then pointed down, where Castiel saw the bottom of Dean's legs sticking out from under a car, some beat up old thing with a shade of paint that might have once been red. Dean could listen to and understand cars like Castiel could read people's souls. To most, it would seem like an average, everyday skill, but Castiel thought souls were much easier to comprehend than engines. 

Castiel held back a disappointed sigh. If this had been the real Dean, he wouldn't have been trying to fix an imaginary car. The true Dean was either trying to save him, or he was dead. Castiel didn't even consider the option that Dean might have made a run for it without him. That would have been the smartest choice, which that was exactly why Dean wouldn't have chosen it. 

So then what if Dean _was_ dead, torn apart by some other creature? Would that mean that Castiel was doomed to be trapped in this fake world for the rest of eternity? 

Sam caught his eye again, and the smile on his face was so simple, so easily offered, that Castiel was left speechless. It was the first thing since he'd “woken up” that had truly startled him, because that wasn't a look that he'd seen Sam produce in some time. 

“Sleep well?” Sam asked. 

Jo waved at him, and Castiel nodded in greeting, mainly out of reflex. The cat bounded toward the pair, and Jo was quick to crouch down and offer it attention by petting it. 

He should have been petting the cat, shouldn't he? That's what domesticated animals enjoyed. That counted as yet another point against him and his ability to function the way a human did. None of this came naturally. Especially when he'd been transposed from a place where there was no daylight, no cars, no cats that weren't oversized and full of fangs. 

“Cas finally woke up?” Dean's voice came from under the car, echoing against the metal. 

Jo sighed. “Dean, give him a break. He saved our asses the other day, so I think he's allowed to oversleep this once.” 

Sam tilted his head at Castiel. “Are you getting used to it? The sleeping thing?” 

Castiel wondered why this imagined version of him was sleeping, if it was now a requirement or a luxury or something he did to make everyone else feel more comfortable. He suspected it was that last option. “I am.” Playing along like this was awkward, but he his guess was that he had to do so if he wanted to escape. 

“I told you before, Cas,” Dean grunted as he rolled out from under the car and then sat up, speckled with oil. It was far preferable to the way that Dean's face had looked lately, marked with bruises and smeared with dirt and blood, but at least that was _real_. “Dreams are overrated.” 

Judging from this one, that was true. Although the smile on Dean's face as he looked up at him was so sincere that it made Castiel's stomach churn. Even in Purgatory, even as they'd slowly reconciled, Dean hadn't ever looked at him like that. The last time he could recall that kind of smile was back when Dean had taken him to the brothel. 

Sam glanced down at Dean. “So, can you fix it?” 

Dean sighed. “I've gotta order a few parts.” 

“Oh no, the great Dean Winchester, humbled by a Gremlin? I think I might die from shock,” Jo teased. 

Castiel stared at all three of them like they were aliens. But it was worse than that—they were phantoms.

This fake Dean, who could smile like it was nothing, rolled his eyes as he pushed his weight against the car and then got to his feet. He wiped his hands off with a dirty rag. “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it'll take about a week for the parts to come in, so we'll wait on that and then we can hit the road again.” 

“Where are you going?” Castiel asked before he could stop himself. He didn't need to learn more about some fantasy world, and yet his curiosity yearned to know if hunting was still a part of their lives here, or if the existence of monsters had been removed entirely. 

Sam looked to him. “Well, hunting. You know none of us can sit still for that long.” 

Jo smiled, but then pinned Dean with a harsh look. “I'm just glad that you're finally offering up the space in your backseat to other people.”

Dean lifted his hands up disarmingly. “Hey, Jo, it was your mom that took issue with you hunting with us. Don't get us involved now.” 

“It's good to hear that it's no longer on only your shoulders,” Castiel spoke up, glancing from Dean to Sam as he made his point. If only it could be that way in reality, but anyone who might want to offer the Winchesters help was dead. 

Well, except for him, but that was an entirely different problem. Not that he shouldn't be dead by now, but unlike Bobby and Jo, he'd been granted more chances than he deserved. Wouldn't Bobby or Jo be more of a help to Sam and Dean than him? So why was he still here?

“Yeah,” Dean replied. He took a few steps toward Castiel and grinned, which broke him out of his thoughts. “With you and Jo backing us up, we're basically unstoppable.” 

Jo gave Dean an incredulous look and Sam only sighed, whereas Castiel was left to stare. 

“Jo and I?” he hesitantly asked after a pause. 

Sam glanced over and tilted his head in confusion. “Well, yeah. You're coming with us, aren't you?”

Before Castiel could answer, Dean grabbed for his arm and started to pull him away from the others. 

“Dean,” Castiel started to protest, but Dean just gave him a look. The right corner of his mouth quirked up, and he raised both eyebrows. It wasn't familiar, and while Castiel didn't recognize it, he was clearly supposed to, in this fake world. 

As Dean led him away, Castiel glanced over his shoulder at Jo and Sam, who were looking at each other knowingly. 

The fake Dean continued to draw him through the junkyard. Castiel should have pulled his wrist out of Dean's grip, because the real one needed him far more than this fabrication, but he didn't. For once, he wasn't being grabbed with urgency, but simply for the sake of it. It was a new feeling, and not one that he had any particular objection to. 

Finally, once they'd moved far enough away that they could no longer hear Jo and Sam, let alone see them through the maze of cars, Dean paused and let him go. 

Castiel stared first down at his wrist, then up at Dean, and then around the area. Why had Dean brought him here? Was there some significance to this spot? 

His heart hammered fast in his chest, faster than made sense in this situation. It was probably just habit, after he'd spent the past however-many days running for his life. He couldn't just calm down, not when he knew where he truly was. Not here, but a place worse than Hell. 

Dean took a step toward him. His hand reached out, and his fingertips brushed Castiel's cheek—

\--- 

Castiel gasped awake, his heart pounding ineffectually against his ribcage—which explained what he'd felt in the dream. Weak and disoriented, Dean's voice still broke through the haze.

“Cas. _Cas_. Come on, work with me here, man!” 

Castiel blinked the dark spots out of his eyes and focused on the waking world. Dean's face floated somewhere above his, and the scenery behind him whipped around at a too-fast pace. He felt pressure against his shoulder blades and lower back, and realized he was being carried. 

“Dean,” he forced out. “It was—”

“A djinn, I know,” Dean quickly replied. “I already iced the bastard, or knocked him out, anyway—and we're going for the lake. You lost a shitload of blood.” Dean took gasping breaths between every few words spoken—understandable, seeing how he was carrying a full-grown man and running at the same time. Castiel wanted to be let down so that he could carry his own weight, so to speak, but he could barely lift his arm. 

As his body got jostled by each step that Dean took, Castiel's head, which felt like it weighed twice as much as it should have, flooded with pain. He closed his eyes, but that only seemed to make it worse. Blood loss wasn't something that should affect him, but he'd spent most of his time in Purgatory dwelling on his shortcomings, and it wasn't going to do any good now. 

“You are really friggin' heavy, though, man,” Dean grunted as he continued to run. “Is it because of all those burgers?” 

“Dean,” Castiel murmured, annoyed at the thinness of his voice. “You don't need me for this part. You already know where to go, and how the ritual works.” He sucked in a breath, but no matter how many times he tried, it never felt like enough oxygen reached his lungs. “Just take some of my blood, and—” 

Dean skidded to a stop, wheezing from exertion as he set Castiel down on the ground. “What the hell is wrong with you? You think I'm gonna leave you behind, after all this?” 

Castiel had to adjust to the sudden change in orientation, swaying in a slight daze as he realized that they had reached the edge of the lake. He stared out across it, his vision blurring and head swimming, before he looked back to Dean. “You have to admit, remaining here would be a fitting fate for me.” 

Dean clenched his jaw. He looked up to the sky, as if searching for a sign, before staring into Castiel's face. “Cas, listen. Do you want to know why I held onto that stupid trenchcoat that whole time?” He grabbed for the coat's lapel and gave it a few hard shakes. “It wasn't because I couldn't get over you lying to us, and it wasn't because I couldn't get over you being gone.” He paused to heave out more breaths, the corners of his eyes wrinkled in anger or some sort of desperation—right now, it was hard for Castiel to distinguish. “It was because I couldn't get over _you_.” 

Those words somehow made Dean's expression click in his mind, because Daphne had worn something strangely similar when she'd asked him—asked Emmanuel—if he would like to be hers. 

Now it made sense. Even when he'd had no memories, the way he'd cared for Daphne, the way that she had literally meant the world to him, had felt so strangely familiar. As Emmanuel, he'd stayed up some nights, thinking about it, wondering what it meant. 

Now he knew. 

“All right,” he said after a pause, at which point Dean visibly relaxed. 

“Look, we're almost there. The thing is that we need to swim across.” Dean looked searchingly across the lake. While the water looked still, the distance wasn't small. Dean dragged a hand through his hair and sighed. “I'm super as hell hoping angels are buoyant, since that should make it a little easier for you to make it. Sorry, man, but I can't carry you through the water.” 

Castiel shook his head. “I wasn't expecting you to.” He squinted and saw a small rock altar on the island. If they reached that, and if the ritual was done right—then the sky would open up and Dean, at least, would make it out. He still didn't know about about himself.

He stood up slowly, and while it took a second or two with his hand resting on Dean's shoulder to find his balance, he did. Castiel examined the water again—but it bothered him, how calm it looked. Madison had mentioned that the leviathans might be here, but instead of seeing their absence as a good sign, it worried him.

“Yeah,” Dean spoke up even though Castiel hadn't said anything, “I don't like it either. But we've gotta get it over with.”

Castiel had waded into water like this before, not all that long ago, but this time he wouldn't do it alone. He drew in what felt like a final breath—as his harsh heartbeat continued to pump his corrupted blood through borrowed veins—and then slowly marched into the water. The ground dropped out beneath his feet almost immediately, forcing him to swim.

Dean swam at his side and while he had more strength than Castiel at the moment—a ludicrous yet true fact—he didn't leave him behind. “You don't need really strong movements,” Dean advised. “Just kick your legs a little and move your arms in small circles and you should move forward.” 

Castiel did as he was told, but each time he moved his arms down and back through the water, it felt like an immense effort. This weakness—was this how humans lived every day? How did they manage it? 

Dean had convinced him to come this far, though, to at least make it to that altar, and so he couldn't give up. He wasn't going to be dragged down; he wasn't going to _sink_. He remembered the way it had felt when the water had closed in on him, that pressure and then the deep blackness that had choked him. He remembered that after waking up as Emmanuel, he'd been coughing up water for days. 

They made it about halfway to the island when Castiel felt a disturbance in the water, a swaying that caused not by their swimming but something else. He glanced to Dean, who was already searching the immediate area for any sign of what it could be. 

With his legs dangling in the water as he paddled forward, Castiel felt far too exposed. He heaved out a few coughs for good measure, even though he'd taken care not to get any water in his mouth, and kept swimming. 

But then in a creeping, insidious way, the water surrounding them changed in shade from dark blue to an inky black. 

Castiel fought the panic bubbling up in him as he continued to tread water and looked to Dean once more. “I'm not seeing things, am I,” he stated, almost tiredly. He knew that he wasn't. He knew this was real, because he'd made a promise to not run from the truth of things anymore.

“No,” Dean replied, almost grimly. “Pretty sure we've got company.” 

Castiel swam faster, forcing his limbs to move even though his body had been drained of blood. Some of the water got in his mouth as he splashed forward, forcing him to pause and cough it up. 

And then, as he looked ahead to see how much further they had to go, he saw a long, dark shadow swish past. 

“Dean,” he called out urgently, reaching out for him as he tried to stay afloat. 

“I saw,” Dean hissed back. 

They both knew what a leviathan truly was, of course. Or at least, Castiel hoped that Dean knew, that he had thought to look it up once the things had started wandering the Earth and causing trouble. They'd hidden well enough in those human forms, but in reality they were large, deadly water serpents. 

And the two of them were nothing more than morsels of food to it at the moment, if it had its way. 

A large splash erupted behind them as the leviathan surfaced (how had it moved around so quickly?), and a second later water rained down on them. “Go!” Castiel ordered Dean. They couldn't get caught now. 

Dean broke out into a swim, but with the stroke of someone more practiced at this than Castiel was. Castiel did his best to follow after him, but before long Dean was more than two body lengths ahead of him. 

Castiel gasped for breath and ignored the burning in his muscles as he kept swimming. The water around him bobbed more severely and tossed him around to the point that might have made his weakened body ill if he'd had long enough to think about it. 

Then, something grabbed at his foot. 

Castiel kicked wildly backward, but it wasn't enough. The end of the leviathan's long body wrapped around his legs and dragged him backward in the water. 

Caught between panic and frustration (hadn't these things made their lives hard enough already?), Castiel twisted around to face the beast, teeth grit in concentration as his sword appeared in his hand. He was faced with a portion of the serpent (most of its body still hid under the water), covered in faded blue scales, its mouth packed full of jagged teeth. Its pinprick red eyes stared down at him, and it looked proud of its catch. 

This thing had most likely been inside of him at one point. He'd pulled in these abominations, and so many other creatures, and they'd decayed him from the inside. He couldn't blame it all on them, though. He'd fallen all on his own, far before then, but they'd made it worse. 

He'd purged himself of these awful, ancient creatures before. No, it was more that they had purged themselves of him, had made use of his vessel and his Grace for as long as they'd needed it, and then left him to wash up. Now he could return the favor. This was it, the end, his final chance to put this all to rest. 

And he would stay down here and fight it for the rest of eternity if need be. 

“Cas!” 

At the sound of Dean's voice, Castiel's arm twitched as he flung the sword forward, aiming for the leviathan's mouth. The blade hits its mark—it broke through some of the creature's teeth like they were made of plastic and then pierced the roof of its mouth. 

The leviathan let out a ringing, hollow cry and flung its immense body around in the water. While it sent powerful waves toward Castiel, it also gave him the opening he needed to jerk himself out of its grip and make a break for it. 

Dean had already reached the island. Relieved as Castiel was that his distraction had given Dean the chance to get that far, he could tell that Dean was waiting for him, that he didn't plan to go anywhere until Castiel stood there with him. He could have at least started to put the ritual together—

When mere feet away from the island, the blackness of the water thickened and deepened around him. The sensation was identical to before—that undeniable feeling that it was going to suck him down, like liquid quicksand, and that would be that. An angel, snuffed out of existence that easily. 

One of his feet started to sink downward. The water pulled up over his head, cloying and heavy. Castiel's throat closed, even as he forced himself up, and tried to breathe, to just breathe—

“Not this time!” Dean's yell broke through the sound of the rushing water and the leviathan's screeching. Castiel kicked up again, and saw Dean had waded halfway back in to retrieve him. “I'm _not_ doing this again!” 

Somehow, other emotions pushed through the panic as he took in that sight. Relief, that Dean would come for him; guilt, that the one he should have been protecting was saving _him_ now. But more than that, a deep fondness that was very misplaced. Not the time, but it was never the time.

Castiel forced his body forward, straining through the thick water as he reached out with one hand. Dean grabbed hold of him and started pulling with both hands and all of his strength. With each step Dean moved backward, Castiel got pulled further out of the water until they both finally broke free. Dean fell back, Castiel forward, and they landed on the solid ground of the small island. 

Castiel spit up as much of the water as he could, but he knew this wasn't the end. It didn't matter that Dean had rescued him this time, because that didn't matter to Castiel nearly as much as getting Dean back to Sam. 

Castiel stood up and watched the frantic splashing through the water—the leviathan struggling to pry that blade out of its mouth. But an angelic weapon wouldn't budge so easily.

“Keep an eye on it,” he told Dean before he heaved out a breath and homed in on the altar—or more specifically, the slight indentation in it that was meant to hold their blood. As his sword was serving a much more important purpose at the moment, Castiel searched the area for something else they could use to cut themselves open. There wasn't much to work with, except...

“Dean,” Castiel said as he moved his hand to his shoulder where he'd been stabbed when Dean had been under the siren's spell. “Apply pressure here until I start bleeding.” 

Dean stared at him like he had two heads. “What are you, crazy?” 

“There's no time to—”

The ground underneath them shook, and both of their heads snapped to the water. The movement of the water, along with brief moments where a sliver of the leviathan's body would peek out from the depths, gave away that it was swimming in fast circles around the island. 

It created a pressure strong enough to kick up waves, and a sizable one headed right for them. Castiel pushed Dean out of the way, to the other side of the small piece of land, but they barely made it out of the water's path before a wave hit them from the other side, drenching them all over again. 

“Can't we catch one break?” Dean snapped. “All right, let's make this quick.” He motioned for Castiel to give him his arm. 

Castiel shrugged out of his trenchcoat on the injured side and then lifted his shirt up to expose the wound. 

Dean pulled close, though he kept a steady eye on the water around them. “All right, brace yourself.” 

Castiel closed his eyes and then clenched his teeth as Dean added pressure, a dull burn that extended all the way through his shoulder and then down his arm. Painful thought it was, it got the job done; he felt blood oozing out. Would it be enough? Castiel hobbled toward the altar and bent over it to let the blood drip out. 

The island shook hard again and would have tossed him to the ground, were it not for Dean grabbing for the injured arm to keep him steady.

Castiel squeezed hard at the flesh around his wound, forced the blood out of his arm like juice out of an orange. Once it had coated the indentation, he pulled back. 

Dean released him (he'd been holding on, the whole time) and let out a sigh. “Now how about me?” 

The blood of the corrupted was taken care of, so now they needed only blood of a being beyond Purgatory, someone Earth-born. Castiel nodded and pulled Dean toward the altar. “I apologize in advance for this.” 

Before Dean could question it, Castiel clenched his hand into a fist. He'd retained just enough power to get the job done, to twist something inside that vulnerable human body and cause Dean to cough up blood. 

Dean's eyes widened as his mouth filled with it, but he put it together quickly and bent down to spit into the altar.

This had to be the crudest way that blood had been collected in a long history of spellwork, but Castiel didn't care about technique now. Not when they were this close. 

Once Dean had coughed up enough blood for them to work with, Castiel loosened his hand. Dean stumbled back and lifted a hand to wipe at his mouth. “All right,” he said thickly, like his chest was still clogged with blood. “You know what to draw now, right?” 

How could he forget? Castiel remembered how he'd drawn the pattern, each line made so delicately, how he'd thought to himself that he'd finally won, that Raphael would _pay_ and nothing would stop him. It was something he wished he could push from his mind forever, but he had to live with it. What was the point of atonement otherwise? 

“I need you to distract it,” he said, and then, as if on cue, water crashed against them as the leviathan rose up to its full height to tower above them. It had managed to dislodge his sword, though its mouth and neck were still stained red with blood. That wasn't about to stop it from trying to tear into them.

Dean glared up at it and shot only a quick glance at Castiel. “So I have to be the bait?” 

The leviathan threw itself down, the first section of its body slamming against the ground between them. It sent both of them off balance and Castiel fell against the altar and cracked his head against it so hard that his vision went black. 

By the time it returned to him, Dean had already gotten to his feet. He literally leapt toward the serpent's body and wrapped his arms around its scaly, slippery neck. “Draw fast!” he yelled down to Castiel as the leviathan pulled back and shook its head wildly in an attempt to dislodge him. 

If nothing else, Dean knew what a good distraction constituted, and Castiel wasn't about to waste the time Dean was buying him. He dragged himself up from the ground and dipped his fingers into the mixture of blood. His hand started to shake with memories of terrible decisions, of the betrayal in Dean's eyes, but this time he'd undo that—or as close as he could get to undoing such a terrible mistake.

He was an angel, and an angel did what needed to be done when it mattered most. An angel was able to forget that he was dripping wet, that he was weak from being drained of blood, that there was a ferocious creature doing its best to kill his best friend raging around behind him, and focus on just one thing. 

Focus. He had to focus. 

All he had to do was get the outline right. It didn't have to be perfect, and with how wet the ground was, the blood quickly slid away into rivulets. But the strokes he made with his fingers were correct, and his purpose was strong and true. He was going to get Dean out of this place. 

He didn't know if he'd be going with him, but if he did, this would be the epitome of déjà vu. Even if Dean didn't remember, they had been here before. They'd escaped that demonic stronghold together.

He'd finished. Castiel stared down at the smeared blood, his and Dean's, and felt the power humming within it. He stood up and turned just in time to see Dean get thrown off of the beast's head toward him. 

Castiel raced forward to try and catch him, but he wasn't fast enough. Dean hit the ground hard, so hard that it kicked up dust and water. Castiel tensed, because Dean might have broken something—or worse. His heart squeezed in his chest, like it was trying to burst out. Humans were always so, so fragile, and if Dean had landed wrong on his back or his neck... 

The leviathan hung above them (was it thinking about how puny they were? Did it not realize that in his true form, he would have dwarfed it?), and Castiel tilted his head up to give it a look of divine wrath. If he'd had it in him, he would have smote the thing with just his stare. 

Instead, he raced forward and grabbed Dean under his arms. “Dean!” 

Before he could properly lift him, Dean, somehow still awake, wriggled out of his grip. “I—I got it! I'm good.”

“There's no time—”

The leviathan slithered its way across the ground toward them. Its head reared up and snapped toward them like a snake's, jaw unhinged and fangs exposed.

Castiel ducked down and pressed his hand down on the edge of the sigil—

And then, right before the serpent's jaws reached him, a light burst out from beneath them. 

It was the sort of power that Castiel should have been able to form with a flick of his hand, but that didn't matter now. 

The leviathan crashed back into the water, repelled by the light. Behind them, an ornate set of doors appeared. Light peeked out from under the cracks, and they slowly started to creak open. 

Did this mean they'd won? 

“Cas!” Dean yelled out. “This is it!” 

A gust of air kicked up, strong enough to push Dean toward the opening doors. But while Castiel felt the wind whip through his hair, it didn't urge his body forward. 

And hadn't he thought this was how it would turn out? Castiel had told himself from the start that if a sacrifice was necessary, he'd gladly accept that role, but he didn't have a choice either way. Those doors wouldn't let him through. 

“Cas?” Dean's voice cracked as he stared back at him. 

Castiel felt something in him splinter as he watched the realization wash across Dean's face, that he wouldn't be coming with. 

“Cas!” Dean yelled again, as if shouting his name louder would change things. 

Castiel bowed his head. “Dean, I have to stay here. I'm... the sacrifice.” He shouldn't have kept it from him. Secrets were what had landed him here in the first place. But knowing this ahead of time wouldn't have done Dean any good. No, at least they'd been able to repair some of their friendship in their time here, had been granted a few quiet moments to talk things over as best they could. 

“No—what?! No! Fuck that. Cas!” Dean struggled against the wind, fighting his way back toward Castiel even though his legs shook from the effort. Through sheer strength of will alone, Dean made it close enough that he could stretch forward with his hand, as far as his shoulder would let him. “Come on!” 

Castiel needed to stay here. It was his punishment, and he wouldn't begrudge it, he wouldn't hide or run. 

“Dean...”

“Whatever bullshit you're about to spout, just shut it! I didn't bust my ass for it to end like this!”

Dean stretched further. His hand brushed Castiel's cheek. 

Castiel grabbed for it, an instinct he couldn't take back. He gripped Dean's hand as hard as he'd once held onto Heaven's ideals, and he refused to let go. 

Dean grabbed for Castiel's arm and pulled him forward, until they stood chest to chest. Castiel tried to fight toward the doors, but even if he lifted his leg, he couldn't actually take a step. 

“Dean!” Castiel exclaimed as he shook his head. “It's no good!” 

Dean shook his head and wrapped his arms around Castiel's back, pulling him closer. Castiel lifted his arms to circle them around Dean and return what was an odd sort of embrace. As the wind blew Dean's body toward the doors again, he dragged Castiel with them. 

It wasn't supposed to work this way, but since when had the Winchesters ever followed the rules? 

As they got closer to the doors, Castiel tucked his head down against Dean's chest, and held his breath. The light enveloped them, and then—

Nothing.

\--- 

It was dark and dank. Castiel opened his eyes slowly, but felt immediate panic. Had it not worked after all? Had Dean made it through the door, and he was still a prisoner of Purgatory?

He was in a basement, with a hard floor and concrete walls, covered in dust and—

Familiar. This was 221 Piermont Avenue in Bootbock, Kansas. The place where Crowley had tortured so many of Eve's children; the place where Castiel had betrayed Crowley and slaughtered Raphael; the place where the door had opened, where those souls had entered him and where he'd cast them off again. 

The place where he'd taken Dean's trust and ground it into dust. 

Dean. Where was Dean? Castiel shifted in place, pushed past his weakness, and found Dean seated next to him, in a similar haze of confusion at suddenly being somewhere else. 

And there, near the door, stood Sam. Just as Castiel remembered him, from his shaggy hair to his plaid wardrobe. He clutched onto a book and stared at both of them like they were ghosts. 

“Sam,” Dean choked out as he grabbed for the wall and pulled himself to his feet. 

“Dean!” The sight of Dean talking and moving set Sam into motion—he rushed toward Dean to half help him up, half throw his arms around him. Finally, the Winchester brothers were united. Finally, the world was rotating back on the right axis.

Castiel watched them hug from where he remained on the floor, and finally started to push himself up. His body protested—even now that he was back within reach of Heaven, he still felt weak.

But now he'd be able to heal properly, given time. As he stood, he moved his wings back and forth for a moment, stretched them out and then let out a breath. 

They'd made it. Sam was here, and while the location made it feel like an empty victory, Castiel had come with them. He'd stepped through the door with Dean; he'd somehow been deemed worthy of existing in the living world. Another resurrection, he realized, but this one felt different. 

Dean and Sam pulled out of the hug in unison (even after time apart, they could read each other's minds) and turned to look at him. 

“You guys are okay!” Sam announced, the look of disbelief standing out in his features. “I mean, I knew—I knew you guys could do it, but man, what happened?”

Even though Sam was the one demanding his attention, for a moment all Castiel did was study Dean's face. The blood streaked around his mouth, the dirt smudged on his cheeks and under his eyes. His hair, which had grown out slightly and was greasy and unwashed.

Dean stared back and sucked in a breath, his eyes alight with something, almost as if he wanted to ask a question—but he said nothing.

“We did it,” Castiel said simply.

“You fucking bet we did. What did I tell you?” Dean grinned and then immediately looked to Sam, as if taking his eyes off of him for too long might cause him to disappear. 

Sam, meanwhile, turned to Castiel. He quirked a smile, almost awkward, but mainly just relieved. 

“Hello, Sam,” Castiel greeted as if they had seen each other yesterday. He didn't know how else to do it, wasn't versed in reunions. 

Sam looked him up and down, his forehead creased with a frown. He was likely used to seeing Dean beat up, but not Castiel. Angels were supposed to bounce back. 

“Thanks,” Sam said, and while there was some awkwardness in his demeanor, it all seemed genuine. “Thanks for taking care of my brother. Thanks for keeping him safe.”

Dean crossed his arms over his chest. “What am I, a two-year-old?”

“The information you gave us was vital,” Castiel told Sam. “If it weren't for you getting back to us, we may not have made it. How did you know to wait for us here?” 

“Well, I've pretty much spent the whole past month doing research,” Sam admitted with a shrug. “And I had all of Bobby's books to go through, so...” 

“Wait,” Dean cut in, stepping forward. “So it's been a month?” 

Castiel remembered all the efforts he'd made to keep time. “That sounds about right.” 

Both of them knew how much worse it could be—how a month here could have equaled something else entirely in Purgatory.

“But seriously, what happened?” Sam tried again. “What was it like down there?” 

Dean and Castiel exchanged a look. How could they put any of it into words, especially so soon after they'd escaped it? 

“We can talk about it later,” Dean said. “Let's get out of here. I need a shower like you wouldn't _believe_.” Castiel couldn't disagree with that. While angels didn't normally cleanse their bodies in the way a human did, he remembered taking showers as Emmanuel and how soothing they had been. 

Dean passed by Castiel for the door. His hand twitched back toward Castiel, as if he wanted to grab his arm or his wrist, but he stopped himself. It wasn't so surprising, when they'd spent the past month relying only on each other. When one was injured, the other had dragged him forward. 

Dean kept walking, past Sam and out the door. Castiel stared after, and it took a questioning look from Sam to break him out of his trance. He followed the Winchesters, their backs holding strong even after being weighed down with so much, and felt a crushing relief. 

They exited the building as quickly as they could, and found the Impala waiting for them. Shining from a recent wash, its pristine black paint didn't look like it had ever been scratched. 

Castiel remembered the plan, how they'd decided to crash the car right into the front of SucroCorp, and was glad to see that the vehicle had been salvaged. 

“You fixed her!” Dean exclaimed as he ran toward the car and then slid his hand over the hood in a caress.

Sam followed after him and sighed. “I wasn't going to leave it that way. I knew I'd be chewed out if you made your way back here and it was still banged up.” 

They had to make themselves slightly more presentable before they could go anywhere near civilization. Castiel turned his coat inside out so that the bloodstains weren't so obvious and Dean smoothed out the tattered remains of his shirt as best he could.

Sam watched them, took note of each smear of blood, probably in an attempt to fill in the blanks. Castiel could tell how anxious Sam was to know—he wouldn't let Dean get away with not telling him some of what had happened. 

Castiel made a move to get into the car then, but Sam reached out to stop him. “Hold on.” 

For an irrational moment, Castiel thought Sam was going to deny him access, to tell him that he could come no further, that he couldn't continue to ruin their lives with his bad decisions. 

Instead, he pulled him into a hug. 

They had tried this once before, though Sam hadn't been willing at that point. Castiel had in fact hugged both of the Winchesters without asking once, in the mental hospital. Even with his mind fractured into pieces, he'd still known one thing with certainty—that he cared for these two boys.

And he did, more than he thought he could ever put into proper words.

As the hug ended and they pulled away from each other, Castiel caught the look on Dean's face. Even though he was dirt-covered and wearing a torn-up, bloodied shirt, his face was alight and refreshed as if he hadn't just escaped Purgatory itself. 

A hug. It was such a small, human action, but Castiel got the feeling that it counted as true and final forgiveness from the person whose mind he had willfully broken. 

“I'm glad you're back to being... you,” Sam said as he clapped Castiel on the shoulder. 

“So am I,” he admitted in reply. 

The three of them stood there, in a silent moment of understanding, each of them relieved that they were all here, together again. Team Free Will. 

“All right.” Sam heaved out a breath and turned back to the Impala. “Let's move this along.”

“Whoa, hold on,” Dean cut in. “I get to drive.” 

Sam turned to Dean and frowned. “Dude, you look like you're on the verge of passing out. Just let me do it.” 

Castiel and Dean both sat in the back seat, on a towel so that they didn't dirty the interior. Castiel couldn't keep his eyes off the smile that seemed to be fixed to Dean's face. He had to burn the image into his mind, for how rare it was these days.

\--- 

While Sam went to rent out another room for them at the motel where he was staying, Dean and Castiel waited in the car. Castiel stared out the window and watched humans walking the streets. He felt conflicted as he realized that for most people, life had simply strolled along while the two of them had been fighting and running for their lives. Then again, wasn't that how it always went? Even when Earth itself was threatened, he and Dean and Sam fought so hard to ensure that the average person didn't have to be aware of how much danger they were in. Their normal lives were precious, and they had to protect that.

“Dean,” he said, as he focused back on the interior of the car. “What comes next?”

Dean glanced over. “Well...” He shrugged. “We keep going, I guess.” 

Castiel paused. It was a typical answer, but that made it comfortable. “Hunting, you mean,” he said. 

“Yeah,” Dean said. “But... it's gonna be different.” 

“How so?” 

“How do you think?” Dean shifted in place and reached down to tug the towel further under him. “Where we send them, they just become even more like monsters.” 

Dean had brought this up once before, and Castiel still didn't know what to say, how to console him. “And they take it out on each other. Isn't that better than them targeting innocents?”

Dean sighed and looked up at the car's ceiling. “Yeah, I _know_. I know. But some of 'em get turned and they don't have any say in it, and...” He winced his eyes shut. 

The silence stretched out again, and Castiel looked down to his hands as he wrung them together. He still didn't know how to be there for Dean. Maybe that siren had a point.

Dean nudged his shoulder against him, snapping him out of it. “How about you? What are your plans?”

Castiel felt his chest seize, as he'd been scared of that question. It was his turn to look upward, even though he knew Heaven was located somewhere else entirely, in a direction that didn't exist in human terms. “I don't know. To be honest, I wasn't expecting to get out of there alive.” 

Dean frowned. “Yeah, I noticed. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Don't act as if you haven't attempted self-sacrifice before,” Castiel murmured. 

Dean rolled his eyes and glanced out the window, quiet for a moment. “You said before that most of your family was dead, right?” 

“As far as I can tell, yes. It's also possible that they've decided to hide themselves from me,” Castiel responded. And how could he blame them? At this point, he was probably known among Heaven as the fallen angel that brought trouble and destruction wherever he went, or as the traitor who had turned his blade on his own kind more times than could be counted. 

None of that was inaccurate. It was a miracle that Dean and Sam had forgiven him, but humans were remarkable creatures in that way. 

“Well, uhh...” Dean smirked, somewhat awkwardly, before glancing over. “In that case, how about you just stick with me and Sam?” 

Castiel stared for a moment, and wondered if this was all some elaborate dream. Maybe he'd missed the djinn grabbing him a second time. He pressed his hand against his shoulder wound and the resulting pain assured him this was real. 

“Yes,” he said after a pause as he smiled down at his knees. “Yes, I think I'd like that.” 

A rapping sound on the window caught their attention, and Sam dangled some keys in front of Dean. They exited the car, and Castiel rounded it to meet them. 

He didn't feel awkward, standing there with them. Dean had offered him a place here, and he wasn't going to push it away this time. 

“All right,” Sam said, “you're in room 212.” He handed the keys over to Dean. “So you can take a shower, rest, and then we'll figure out where to go from here.” 

Dean nodded and slipped the keys in his pocket. “Sounds good.” 

Sam paused for a moment, his eyes growing distant as he seemed to run through some sort of mental list. Then he asked, “Are you guys hungry?” 

“I thought you'd never ask,” Dean said, now taking the conversation very seriously. “I feel like I haven't eaten in weeks.” 

“You probably haven't,” Castiel pointed out with a tilt of his head. 

“All right,” Sam said as he moved to the Impala. “You guys stay here, I'll grab something. What do you feel like?” 

“A burger.” Dean and Castiel said it simultaneously. 

Castiel wasn't sure if he was truly hungry, but he wanted to enjoy the luxury of eating something. Odd, since he didn't usually have such an urge, but perhaps being removed from Earth had taken more of a toll than he'd realized. 

Sam laughed and shook his head. “All right, that works.” He opened the car door, but then paused and looked both of them over. “Should I assume... Cas, that you're going to stick around for a while?” 

“You better believe it,” Dean said, responding for him. As Sam nodded and got into the car (but only after a reminder that they had to tell him about Purgatory sometime soon), Dean glanced over and winked at Castiel. 

After they watched Sam drive off, Dean turned to Castiel. “Come on,” he said. 

And then he reached out for him. Castiel thought he would abort the action, like he had before, but Dean's fingers curled around his wrist, hot, filled with blood, human and real—and pulled him toward the stairs. Castiel recalled the djinn's dream, when Dean had led him away from Sam and Jo. He hadn't understood it then, and he still didn't. 

As they climbed, Dean continued to tug at him, almost as if he was in a hurry. Castiel wanted to remind him that they didn't need to rush anymore, that the danger was over and the world had slowed down again, but for some reason the words got caught in his throat. 

They reached 212, and Dean fumbled with the keys and opened the door. He pulled Castiel in with him, and then shut the door behind him—

“Dean, it's...” Castiel finally got some words out, but Dean stopped him. 

He pushed him up against the closed door and clamped his hand's on Castiel's arms, with such an urgency and energy that he could have been under the siren's spell. 

But he wasn't, not as he leaned in, and not as he pressed his mouth against Castiel's. 

Castiel's heart jumped into his throat at the same time that his stomach sank, such opposite feelings that it made him dizzy. The warmth on his lips, the pressing insistence as Dean didn't let up—

Castiel had done this before, with a demon and a human woman, and the way he felt about Dean Winchester was far more complicated than those two combined. Why would he ever want to resist this? 

This was what Castiel had been waiting for, but he hadn't known it until this very moment. He reached up to grip Dean's sides and pulled him closer, remembered the times he'd kissed before and tried to replicate that—no, to do it better, press deeper into Dean's mouth, as if learning the shape of it with his tongue would reveal to him all of the words Dean didn't say. 

When Dean pulled back, his face was flushed, his eyes wide and bright, as he drew in quick breaths. 

For a few seconds, silence stretched between them. Dean was the one who finally broke it.

“I've been waiting to do that since we woke up in that rank-ass basement,” he said, breath hot against Castiel's cheek. 

Castiel fought not to shake in response. His mouth still felt like it was on fire with something impure and forbidden and exhilarating, and he closed his eyes as he looped his hand around Dean's back. “Only since then?” he asked. 

Dean set a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry,” he said quietly.

Castiel shook his head. “Don't be.”

\--- 

Some time later, Castiel made good on a promise.

Together he and Dean stood at the shoreline and stared out across the water. Not as red as the legends said, this was still a special place, one with a history Castiel had observed himself. 

Dean bit at his bottom lip and then bent down to pick up a small rock. “You didn't have to do this, you know. I'm not that big on traveling, anyway.” 

“I felt that I needed to. For a world that you work so hard to save, you haven't seen much of it,” Castiel pointed out. “I would imagine this is far preferable to that mass of blood.” 

Of course it was. Shaped by his Father's hands, and then altered by the whims of ambitions of humans, the Red Sea was like every other part of the Earth—stunning in its own way, because of the creatures that inhabited it. Fish swam here, sometimes humans too. Moses had parted it, years and years ago, as the angels watched. Now, a man who'd been through Hell and Purgatory alike, stood here and hopefully understood just a little better what he was fighting for. 

Dean hurled the rock across the water and watched it skip. 

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” Dean turned to Castiel. “Thanks.” 

“I would take you many other places, if you'd only let me. Tibet is very—”

Dean shook his head. “Let's focus on America first. You know where I want to take Sammy? The Grand Canyon.” 

Such a small request, but Castiel didn't mind. “Very well,” he said. 

They stood for a bit longer, in silence. Their wounds had all healed now, and bringing Dean halfway across the world simply to look at a body of water was not a strain. He'd made sure to heal all of Dean's scars as well, to erase as much indication of what they'd suffered through as he could. 

Castiel watched the small waves extend out toward them, and then pulled back, as if the sea was breathing. This water would never be black, or tainted. They'd seen to that. 

The feeling of Dean's fingers grabbing at his, and then entwining, reoriented him. Castiel stared up into Dean's eyes, and then looked down at their hands. 

He finally found the words for something he'd wanted to ask about since they'd escaped Purgatory. “What is this, then? Do we need to tell Sam?” 

Dean raised his eyebrows, and almost pulled away—might have, if it weren't for the fact that there wasn't another soul for miles. “Slow down there, man.”

“I suppose you're right.” Castiel knew he had to with whatever made Dean comfortable in this situation, as it wasn't one either of them had navigated before. 

Dean smiled briefly. “How did you put it? We're making it up as we go?” 

Castiel was shocked that Dean would even remember, but that day when he'd broken off from Heaven was still crystal clear in his own mind. “Yes,” he confirmed. “I think I can work with that.” 

“Good,” Dean said. “So do I.”

Somehow, down in that wasteland of misery and pain, across those landscapes of blood and bone, in those caves and hollows, they'd taken something broken and revived it—not into exactly what it had been, but something different. Perhaps something better. 

And now Castiel understood, home was not a place, but a feeling.


End file.
